TRDUPING FOR 
THE TROOPS 

MARGARET MAYO 





Class D 6 4 

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CiJPBRIGHT DEPOSIT 



TROUPING FOR 
THE TROOPS 

IVIARGARET MAYO 




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TROUPING 
FOR THE TROOPS 

Fun-Making at the Front 

BY 

IVIARGARET iVIAYO 




NEW XBJr YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



13 (b 4-0 



g)pteight, 1919, by 
Geobge H. Doban Company 



CMr ;y loiy ^^Ht< 



PRINTED IN THE TJNITED STATES OF AMEBICA 



(P)CI.A529885 



^10 1 



TO 
MY DEAR LITTLE MOTHER 

And to those who, like her, waited, watched 
and prayed against so many dangers that 
never came, I dedicate these pocket flash- 
lights of the last three months of the war as 
seen by me and my fellow-players in an ef- 
fort to Ciirrj' to "the boys" a message of 
cheer that everj' sister, wife, and mother 
would gladly have brought in our place had 
she been permitted. 



CONTENTS 




PART I: 






PAGE 


On the Edge 


11 


PART II: 




The Advanced Zone 


62 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 



TROUPING 
FOR THE TROOPS 

PART I: ON THE EDGE 

Sunday, Sept. 8th, 1918 
Somewhere in France. 

It is just about one calendar month since 
we said ffood-bve to New York. "We" mean- 
ing a band of six players from tlie "Overseas 
Theatre League" who have come here to play 
under the "Y" in tlie American camps in 
France. 

I understand now why tliose at home are so 
often disappointed in the lack of color and 
human detail that they receive in the reports 
from the Americans over here. Things come 
too fast for us in this warriors* world and novel- 
ties have become commonplaces before we can 
find time to ^vi'ite home about them. Then, 
too, the lack of routine in one's daily life over 
here, the necessity for constant readjustment 

[11] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

to new conditions, the desire to drink in new 
knowledge of a world about which all those who 
have come before are eager to report. All 
these things exhaust both time and vitality and 
when the "Good nights" are going round one 
is glad to draw the funny, fat, French feather 
bed over as much of one's anatomy as it will 
cover and console the conscience that is trjdng 
to get one to write with the old, familiar "ma- 
nyana." And by tlie way, I have discovered 
that the Spanish "manyana" and the French 
"tout de suite" arrive at about the same time. 

On leaving "the other side" I didn't watcH 
the Goddess of Liberty out of sight, nor even 
the New York dock and in this I am told I was 
not in the minority. In the first place, since 
all the friends and relatives of passengers had 
been forbidden to come within more than gun- 
shot of the dock, a merciful provision for all 
concerned even in peace times, it was not nec- 
essary either for them or for us to stand first on 
one foot then on the other waving sickly fare- 
wells with smiles growing more and more 
forced. In the second place, there were three 
classes of persons on board, those eager to get 
away from conditions at home, those with 

[12] 



TROUPIXG FOR THE TROOPS 

splendid and difficult jobs to be tackled on 
"the other side," big humanitarian jobs, and 
those whose services the Government had 
drafted. Any and all of these motives meant 
"eyes straight ahead" not backward. 

A bored ingenue and ex-film actress who 
shared my stateroom with two other "Over- 
seas" players, voiced her feehngs about de- 
parture without much ceremony when she 
said: 

"Why should I want to watch the darned 
Goddess out of sight?" 

"I'm so sick of hearing what those pie-faced 
picture stars get, that I hope I'll never see the 
Xand of Liberty' again." 

I walked round the deck soon after this re- 
mark and most of the sallow faces and dull 
eyes staring out from the backs of steamer 
chairs were equally world weary. Of course 
there had been the long di-awn fatigue of get- 
ting passports and standing in line for days in 
badly ventilated offices only to be told that 
tvhatever one had done or wherever one had 
come, preliminary to departure, one was all 
T\Tong and must start over again, and some of 
the lassitude that was on us now was from the 

[13] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

relief of not having to make out any more 
"questionnaires." 

About half way down the deck, there was 
one pair of eyes with a different light in them, 
a pure, holy, far-seeing light. They belonged 
to a woman who was crossing for the third time 
within a few months. Her name was Mrs. 
Ray Brown. I believe she was assisting in the 
extension and re-organisation of some of the 
hospital systems, though she never talked about 
herself, so I do not know. She, at least, knew 
why she was going and to what. 

At the end of the deck I stopped to look 
over the rail. The deck below was swarming 
with red-coated Polish soldiers. There was a 
light in most of their faces, too, and a spirit 
of adventure quickened all their movements. 

While I stood at the rail General du Pont, 
the powder king, joined me. He was in the 
uniform of the Y. ^I. C. A. and going over not 
only to study the activities of that organisation 
and the Red Cross in relation to the war, but 
also to "see the war" and to give service where- 
ever the opportunity might offer. This is a 
sort of free lance soldiering permitted only to 
men of unusual power, influence and money 

[14] 



TROUPIXG FOR THE TROOPS 

and very much envied by the less fortunate who 
are restricted by a more limited field of action. 
The General was joined in turn by a rich 
young stock-broker who had been known 
around New York for years as a sort of harm- 
less lounge lizard and indulgent "first nighter." 
His ambition at present was to get to the front 
and drive an ambulance for the Red Cross. He 
had ah-eady acquired the uniform but I am 
told that he is now bewaiHng his fate in the 
warehouse of a dull French port where he has 
been set to "counting chemises." Upon hear- 
ing which, one of his friends remarked that his 
reputation on Broadway had no doubt pre- 
ceded him. 

The next person to join our group was the 
dark, snappy-eyed wife of a Spanish official 
who was greatly perturbed because America 
was not sending her most beautiful "cocottes" 
to the cafes of Spain to compete with the Ger- 
man cocottes who were there in great numbers 
heavily backed by their government to spread 
German propaganda amongst their table com- 
panions. 

We were interrupted by an emissarj^ to Bel- 
gium who pointed out to us the floating city 

[15] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

that now surrounded us, merchantmen, sailing 
vessels, torpedo destroyers, battleships, trans- 
ports, fruit ships, coalers, twenty-two in all 
moving forward in neighbourly proximity on a 
sea of gold, while airplanes and dirigibles 
floated like guardian angels above them. It 
reminded one of Venice in a late September 
sun with its canals and baby castles, and one 
felt almost as though it were possible to step 
about on this still sea of gold from ship to ship. 

At noon of next day while most of us were 
at "dejeuner" our particular ship, the fastest 
of the convoy suddenly leapt ahead. The 
change in speed was so sudden and so apparent 
that some of the men went up on deck to in- 
quire about it. They learned that a submarine 
had hit a provision ship just in our wake and 
our captain having women and children aboard, 
had, according to his orders, put on "full speed 
ahead." In an incredibly short time we were 
out in the now gray sea alone. 

That night and every night no lights were 
permitted on deck, even the illuminated wrist- 
watches which most of the passengers wore 
were ordered "turned in,'* meaning inside out 

[16] 



TROUPIXG FOR THE TROOPS 

on the wrist. The air was hea-vy and hot and 
the staterooms overcrowded and we were still 
in the clanger zone so most of the passengers 
preferred to remain on deck and finally, when 
most of these dark mysterious figures had 
ceased bumping into each other and apologis- 
ing for having got into the T^Tong chairs, arms, 
or laps, one of the American "entertainers" — 
Gray by name — woke many, and amused some 
of us, by marching along the deck with three at- 
tendants and calling out in a militaiy manner 
"Cover up your wrist watches and youi* lieuten- 
ants," 

When we looked round the deck in the ap- 
proaching dawn we realised to how many cou- 
ples tliis conmiand might have applied and 
during the day the number of xmif orms on deck 
seemed constantly to increase. We got the ex- 
planation of this at about the same time that it 
reached the Captain. Besides tlie officers who 
were booked on our deck there was a full com- 
panj^ of our boys in the steerage and two hmi- 
dred and fifty other boys who were trying to 
catch up with their commands, having taken 
too long on previous occasions to bid their 
sweethearts "good-bye." Among the former 

117] 



troupi:n^g for the troops 

was the son of a Milwaukee brewer who paj^s 
taxes on thu*ty million a year. "When the pangs 
of hunger began to gnaw, our government hav- 
ing neglected to equip these boys with the bread 
baskets with which the average steerage pas- 
senger "pieces out," the son of our many times 
millionaire remembered a rich friend of his 
father's who was reported as being aboard ship. 
A message was manoeuvred to the said friend 
and a return message was accompanied by an 
official permit for young brewer to visit "fath- 
er's friend" on deck. This was the beginning of 
a two days' successful foraging cami^aign from 
the steerage to the first class. Those below 
who had no friends above, got the word up on 
deck and were adopted. If they were not al- 
ways permitted to \dsit their unseen protectors 
they could at least receive sweets and food from 
them and by noon of the second day every 
woman on board was surreptitiously dropping 
part of her meal into a paper in her lap and 
stealing out on deck with it to some waiting 
"prowler." 

But on the morning of the third day when 
an overly hungry youth called at the state- 
room of one of these ladies before she had had 

[18] 



TROUPIXG FOR THE TROOPS 

her bath and asked for the breakfast promised 
him, the stewardess who was in attendance 
thought the matter had gone far enough and 
evidently reported her observations to head- 
quarters and by noon time the Captain had is- 
sued orders that no more visits were to be per- 
mitted from the Xetherlands. 

There was a great deal of bemoaning about 
this and some depressing rumours came up 
from below. First of all one of the boys down 
there died of heart failure and was buried at 
sea, a second one engaged in a peppeiy bout 
with one of his fellows, was knocked off or fell 
overboard, a third jumped over and was 
drowned. Each of us tried to argue that a life 
more or less mattered little when so many were 
going to the sacrifice but each of us felt the 
double tragedy of these mere boys going under 
without the big chance of first "going over the 
top." 

On the first Sunday morning of the voyage 
the sunlight returned to us and I ambled out 
on deck. I heard a monotonous mumbling. I 
followed the direction of the sound and soon 
looked down on hundreds of red coats on the 
backs of kneeling Polish soldiers. Against a 

[19] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

background of ally flags a priest in white vest- 
ments officiated at an emergency altar made up 
of packing cases. A ray of sunlight fell aslant 
of his face as he turned with uplifted arms to 
pronounce the benediction. 

The next night I stood at the door of the 
saloon after dinner with Parker Nevin, a typi- 
cal New Yorker. The curtains were drawTi to 
shut out the light from prowling submarines 
and the decks outside were pitch black, but in- 
side, the atmosphere was quite as gay as in 
peace times and the lights quite as bright. 
Some Y. M. C. A. "Entertainers," two of them 
members of my unit, had just concluded a 
show that would not have bored a lover of the 
Ziegfeld Follies, and a dance was now starting 
in which there was no smaU sprinkling of "Y" 
and Red Cross uniforms. At the far end of 
the corridor through a cloud of smoke, one 
could see other members of these two organiza- 
tions sipping hght wines, smoking and playing 
bridge. It was all harmless enough but 
picturesque. I heard Parker Nevin's sigh. I 
turned to see him shaking his head sadly. I 
asked his trouble. He answered with a sad ht- 
tle smile that the world was all upside down, 

[20] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

"The Y. M. C. A. dancing and the Red Cross 
drinking and the soldiers praying." 

The short respite from danger zone to dan- 
ger zone was soon over and new interest was 
provided when we failed to meet our convoy on 
the other side, at either of the spots designated. 
Using his own judgment our Captain shot 
ahead full speed unconducted and a more de- 
corous fellow ship just behind that waited for 
the convoy was torpedoed for its pains. 

The moon burst forth on our last night 
aboard, round and red as harvest, and at mid- 
night with the flood tide we made our way up 
the beautiful Gironde with "La Belle France" 
smiling from either shore. All the steamer 
cliairs were occupied and many confidential 
promises were exchanged. Then again there 
were those who sat apart gazing silently out 
over the waters toward the soft, mysterious 
tree-fringed shores. Was this new phase of life 
going to fill the aching void or would it, too, 
disappoint them? 

With the early morning came all the hustle 
and confusion of disembarking at Bordeaux. 
Ofiicials demanding passports and health cer- 

[21] 



TROUPi:NrG FOR THE TROOPS 

tificates and giving landing permits to some 
and subjecting others who were under suspicion 
to further examination, luggage to be weighed 
and checked, identification papers and photo- 
graphs to be signed — Heaven knows what other 
details — and then all of us loaded into the toy 
French train bound for Paris. On our way to 
the station we passed our Pohsh friends, hun- 
dreds of them, in their red coats marching with 
a jaunty air and smiling faces. "Bon chance!" 
we called to them with lumps in our throats and 
they called back similar farewells to us. 

Then hours of soul satisf png landscape each 
of us exclaiming at first at sight of a new cha- 
teau, picturesque courtyard or vineyard, then 
one by one subsiding under the calm of the 
beautiful well tUled fields, winding streams 
edged -snth poplars and the low lying hills over 
which creep the white ribbon roads that lose 
themselves in the pale blue horizon. 

But we were barely under the spell of all this 
gentle domesticity when we were startled out 
of our reverie by suddenly whizzing through a 
dusty covered, training encampment of Ameri- 
can soldiers and here we caught our first sight 
of German prisoners. They were IsLjing Ameri- 

[22] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

can tracks under the direction of American 
engineers and a little further on we saw Anieri- 
can locomotives and cars moving hundreds of 
American flying machines over American 
tracks already laid. From here on the land- 
scape was repeatedly dotted by signs of the 
most stirring American activity. There was a 
certain pathos in the picture of a bent-backed 
old Frenclmian bringing his one or two cows 
round his hay stack into his quiet little court- 
yard only to see them sent flying for their lives 
before a huge American motor truck that came 
rattling across his court yard almost upon his 
heels. 

One began to speculate as to the permanent 
change that busy industrial America was go- 
ing to eff*ect in dreamy picturesque France. 

It was night when we crept into Paris. No 
eager porters, "facteurs," to snatch our luggage 
from our hands, no one even to lift it from the 
railway carriages. We shoved, pulled, or 
pushed it onto the platform as best we could 
and struggled with it up an escalator that was 
not working. Outside in the semi-darkness a 
few army cars and trucks loaned to the Y. jM. 

[23] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

C. A. were waiting to take us to our various 
hotels and with hasty good-byes to ship ac- 
quaintances scattering now to all parts of 
France, we rattled away over the cobble stones 
into the narrow winding byways, across the 
Seine that shone like a silver ribbon in the 
moonlight and into the lovely white, still gar- 
dens of the Tuileries. 

We gasped at the beauty of it all. I had 
seen Paris many times in the full glare of its 
yellow night lights, its tawdry night prowlers 
exchanging cheap pleasantries, everything 
false, fakey and covered with tinsel to enslave 
and betray the senses of the already bewildered 
stranger, but I had never seen Paris robbed of 
cheap camouflage lit only by the moon and the 
starlight and a faint green ray that peeped 
from beneath the heads of the elevated street 
lamps ; it was as though — some one of our party 
remarked — as though old Paris were dead and 
the soul of new Paris were arising out of the 
debris. 

When we reached the Hotel, the "Y" had 
seen to it that our rooms and a hot supper were 
waiting. 

As I looked down the long supper table I 
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TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

knew for the first time just how many sorts 
and conditions of men and women had crossed 
under the auspices of the *'Y'* on our steamer. 
There were "spiritual advisers" as the boys call 
them, engineers for hut construction and road 
building, supply men to assist in the provision- 
ing of these huts, athletic instructors, canteen 
.workers, secretaries, stenographers, bankers, 
and other important American financiers and 
last, but not least popular, our o-^ti little band 
of American * 'entertainers" bound for we 
knew not what nor where. The interesting lq- 
struction given us before leaving America was 
so to arrange our programme that we would 
not be disconcerted if we found it necessary to 
cut our "show" in half and rush on to another 
camp where the boys were about to go into ac- 
tion and needed relief from their tense state of 
thought. Upon talking to some of the Gen- 
erals since, I'm inchned to agi*ee with them 
that it is the boys who have just come out of 
action, ha^nng been obliged to fight across the 
bodies of their fallen comrades, the boys who 
are trying to forget the sight of staring eyes 
in ghastly upturned faces, these are the boys 
who need to be wakened from their trance of 

[25] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

horror and brought back to a realisation that 
the world still laughs and plays somewhere. 
These are the boys that we are hoping later to 
reach. 

After supper we were informed that we were 
to report at a httle chapel just back of the 
Madeleine at 9.30 the next morning for "con- 
ference." A murmur of rebellion was distinct- 
ly audible as we made our way to bed. Early 
morning conference about a lot of Y. ]M. C. A. 
dogma that could not possibly interest us when 
we were all dying to spend our first morning 
in Paris basking in the sunlight, gazing in shop 
windows, or sipping our coffee, French fash- 
ion, at the dirty little outdoor tables looking 
out on the busy boulevards. 

The spu-it of resentment was so strong in 
some of the travellers that they did not go 
near the Chapel the next morning. Theirs was 
the loss for those of us who went to "scoff re- 
mained to pray.'* 

"We found not only a part of our ship's party 
there but himdreds of other recent arrivals 
under the "Y." Some had come by way of 

[26] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

England, some on Army transports, some on 
passenger ships. 

The handful of men waiting to talk to us 
in an informal way was not made up of 
"preachers" as we had supposed it woidd be 
but of various workers — representing the more 
important branches of the " Y" activities, work- 
ers who had been at their jobs for many 
months, who had served not only in Paris and 
in the advanced zones of war but some of them 
up to the front line trenches. i 

They were not there to make us feel their 
superiority or offer advice; they were there to 
hold out their hands and help us across the 
stepping stones on which their poor feet and 
hearts had too often been bruised. They were 
there to beg that we, fresh from an unridden 
country with strong nerves and brave hearts, 
remember always the sliattered condition of 
the nerves of oiu' French alHes ridden by 
four years of war, privation and discourage- 
ment. They asked the question, how many 
out of the hundreds of us assembled there were 
now living in the houses in which we were born; 
three persons raised hands. They asked how 
many of us were living in houses in which we 

[27] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

had been for more than ten years. A few more 
persons raised hands. Then they asked us to 
remember that the average Frenchman was 
accustomed to hve not only in the house of his 
birth but in the house in which his grandfather 
and his great-grandfather had Hved and that 
when this home was invaded, or threatened by 
invasion, he was like a lost child crj^ing out in 
the wilderness and yet each one of the men and 
women amongst whom we were to take up our 
duties had lived in constant dread of losing the 
little left to them and there was not one among 
them who had not lost at least one person out 
of their lives whose coming had once quickened 
their pulses. 

The speakers also reminded us that there 
were many tired, overworked, disappointed 
Americans who also deserved our patience and 
our admiration, men and women who had vol- 
unteered at the very outset of the struggle who 
had given up good lucrative positions at home, 
some of them big executive positions, and who 
for the good of the cause had forced them- 
selves to fit into dull obscure niches over here 
and work for eighteen hours a day at secre- 
tarial jobs which they had outgrown at home 

[28] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

in their youth. Some of the jobs were in out of 
the way ports far from Paris or the battle line, 
or from an>i:hing to stimulate interest in their 
performance and yet because some one must 
do this dull work these men and women had 
consented to be the martyrs. 

It takes seven men behind the line to keep 
one man in the line so the experts have figured 
out and the man to be pitied is the man who 
has come to France with high hopes of pictur- 
esque service only to find himself the seventh 
behind the gun, relegated to counting packing 
cases in some out of the way port. 

After our approaching relations with the 
French had been touched upon, the engineer 
at the head of the hut construction told us how 
his men were managing to complete one hut a 
day at an evarege cost of from fifteen to twenty 
thousand dollars. He told us something of the 
difficulty of procuring the materials for these 
huts and how diplomatic bodies both in France 
and America had to pass upon a request for 
even a few pounds of nails. Next followed a 
report from one of the supply agents who ex- 
plained that by command of General Pershing 
the "Y." had taken over the gi'ocery depart* 

[29]i _ 



GROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

ment in addition to its canteen business. We 
learned that bacon was worth so much in 
Sj)ain, chocolate so much here, sweet crackers 
so much there, etc., and to our amazement we 
learned that the Y. M. C. A. in France alone 
was handling in its construction and provision 
department more than one hundred million dol- 
lars a year. 

'Next came a report from one of the athletic 
directors and from him we learned that Gen- 
eral Pershing had just directed the "Y." to 
teach baseball to both the American and 
French troops. He explained the inclination 
of the naturally polite Frenclmian to sacrifice 
a home run while he apologised to his opponent 
for having seemed rude to him, he said too that 
the Frenchmen were often more anxious to ac- 
quire our slang than our strokes. Every good 
play with a Frenchman was a "peepin." 

One of the most important banldng men in 
America who had enlisted in the service of the 
*'Y" spoke of what he hoped to accomplish in 
the way of better exchange and somewhere far 
down the line some of the veteran "spiritual ad- 
visers" were permitted a word. They were 
each of them men, every inch, sunny, brave, 

[30] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

and with faces radiating healthy humour and 
fine understanding. 

Their warning to the new arrivals was not 
to take advantage of a world crisis to thrust 
their personal creeds or propaganda down the 
throats of the defenceless but rather to avoid 
reference to any creed and to post in the huts 
an announcement of a Jewish ceremony as 
quickly as the announcement of a Presbyterian 
one. They were urged to allow their lives and 
their deeds rather than their words to indicate 
their motives and one so-called "preacher" 
gave the following rule of living as sufficient 
creed for any man: 

"Keep yourself persistently at your best; 

"Keep yourself persistently in the presence 
of the best ; 

"Be your best and share your best." 

On my way home to luncheon I kept repeat- 
ing the words of this last speaker and I ap- 
plied his rule mentally to the whole art of liv- 
ing, the aesthetic side, the business side, the 
physical and the spiritual side. It seemed 
equally sound in control of either. 

When I got back to the hotel I found 
[31] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

a *'Y" secretary who had the Paris diidsion of 
camp entertainment in charge, waiting to 
ask if our Unit of six would play in the Tuil- 
eries Gardens on Sunday afternoon to an au- 
dience of twenty-five thousand soldiers. There 
was to be a sort of continuous performance, the 
first of its kind ever given, it was to run from 
two until seven and three regimental bands 
and three singers from the Opera Comique 
w^ere to fill a large part of the programme. 
Being a fatalist, I accepted though it seemed to 
me that our few small personalities and our 
limited bag of tricks could not go far in the 
open, scattered amongst twenty-five thousand 
men of dissimilar tastes and tongues. It was a 
golden afternoon when we made our way up 
the high platform in the centre of the Gardens. 
A backing of lattice and a roof of overhanging 
boughs was our only enclosure, yet, strangely 
enough almost every line that we spoke or sang 
got a hearty and almost universal response. 
After the performance which was hailed as a 
great success we were photographed and pam- 
pered and sent back to our hotel in one of the 
Army cars. Frenchmen doffed their caps to 
us as we passed and Americans cheered us. It 

[32] 



TROUPIXG FOR THE TROOPS 

was all very exciting and much too pleasant to 
seem like war work. I remembered the rather 
stinging remark of a General in whose com- 
pany I had dined the night before, as guest of 
the Paymaster of Marines. The General had 
been in an important command at Belleau 
Woods a few weeks before when the Marines 
prevented the Boche from entering Paris. He 
had acquitted himself so well that he was to 
receive the Legion of Honour on the morning 
following our dinner party. He was not a 
sentimentahst and he said that if the over- 
seas entertainers were serious in wishing 
to accomplish real good they would devote very 
little time to the camps around Paris but get as 
quickly as possible to the boys fresh from ac- 
tion and scenes of horror. I was glad to have 
played in the Tuileries but eager to press on 
toward the front. 

The next day, our last in Paris for a long 
while to come, we lunched at the Ritz, or at 
least most of us did so, some of us as the 
guests of General du Pont who had crossed 
with us on the steamer and who was now bid- 
ding us Godspeed and I as the guest of Mary 
Young and John Craig, who were in town for 

[33] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

a few days to get supplies and who were eager 
to tell me of the splendid success they were hav- 
ing in the Camps with "Baby JMine." They had 
asked me for the use of the play when the first 
ship-load of our boys were sailing for France 
and while I had been proud of the opportunity 
to give it for such a cause, I had been sceptical 
about their being able to get any effect from 
it, played in tents or out-of-doors, with no 
scenery or properties. They now told me 
laughingly how they carried three large bisque 
dolls under their arms to represent the babies 
and balanced a soap or cracker box on two 
chairs to suggest a cradle and tried, when pos- 
sible, to seat the boys above them in a semi- 
circle on the hillside and in this w^ay they could 
play to thousands at one performance. Their 
eyes were dancing with the joy of the good 
they were doing and as I looked across the table 
at these two who had closed up their splendid 
house in Boston and turned their backs on the 
Stock Company it had taken them years to 
establish it seemed to me that IMaiy still looked 
only a child — and yet she and John had already 
given two boys to the army and one of them to 
the Field of Honour — and would continue to 

[34] 



TROUPIXG FOR THE TROOPS 

give of their best until the last big gun should 
be fired. 

Just now, with characteristic generosity, it 
was their fixed purpose to make me feel that it 
was my play that had been responsible for their 
success and while I knew quite differently they 
did succeed in giving me a stouter heart for the 
bit that I was hoping to contribute to this 
"jNIan's War" and everything seemed to get 
very bright in the big restaurant and I no- 
ticed for the first time, that the sun had come 
out. 

I looked round the Ritz and contrasted the 
present picture with that of the old days when 
JNIaxine Elliot used to sit at a certain round 
table in the corner in all her luscious beauty, 
bankers, leading-men, tennis and polo cham- 
pions hanging over the back of her chair. I 
remembered a smaller table where Ethel Levy 
used to lunch during her great success in her 
first Parisienne review, and the chair on her 
left where her favourite poodle used to sit in 
state and a chair on her right usually occupied 
by the Younger Guitry. The scene was much 
changed now. In the entire length of the din- 
ing-room and in the charming court outside, 

[35] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

the only men to be seen out of uniform were 
the waiters and the few women present were 
also mostly in uniform, Red Cross or Y. M. C. 
A,, and at a little table apart, wrapped in a 
long dark service cape, a veil bound round her 
now serious brow, sat the once gay and colour- 
ful Elsie de Wolfe. And on every side men in 
khaki, blue, or grey, but of all the uniforms 
present it seemed to me that the grey one with 
the black and white trimmings, that of the 
Italian flying corps, was the most interesting 
and the most distinguished. 

In spite of changed accoutrements and con- 
ditions the same old gentle reassuring dignity 
hung over the Ritz guests, like a soft gauze 
canopy not to be pierced by harsh sounds. And 
the greetings and recognitions and good-byes 
that would have been boisterous in the street 
outside sounded only like the humming of bees 
in June time. A Ritz is always a Ritz I 
thought as we passed out into the pebble pathed 
sunlit garden for our cofl*ee. 

At the far end of the garden, sipping his cof- 
fee and smoking a made-to-order cigarette, sat 
George Burr, in earnest conference with two 
officials of the Red Cross. He had abandoned 

[36] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

the administration of large offices in every im- 
portant city in America and crossed the ocean 
to offer his services to the Red Cross in any ca- 
pacity in which they could use him — no matter 
how humble. He had no premonition that he 
was soon to become the beloved head of the 
whole organization and be known by the fond 
title of "The Big Col." 

He was joined by Gilbert "White, America's 
most famous unpublished wit, now serving in 
the Signal Corps, and by Mrs. Florence Ken- 
dal. Gilbert had just drawn a cartoon of Mrs. 
Kendal, a charming young woman of fifty, 
leaving New York to establish an officer's con- 
valescent home in France. On the curb, wav- 
ing good-bye to his mother as she passed down 
Fifth Avenue, stood her popular son IVIess- 
more. He was saying ruefully to the bystand- 
ers — "I'm too old to fight but I'm sending 
mother." 

We all had a good laugh at Gilbert's cartoon, 
then simultaneously, every one seemed to real- 
ize that "dejune" — the only enjoyable respite 
still permitted in war time — was over and with- 
in a few minutes the garden and restaurant 
were silent and deserted. 

[37] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

That night another Army car tore its way- 
through the streets with us and out into the 
country to a little band of engineers stationed 
near some barge canal. When we arrived they 
were still busy with saw and hammer finishing 
a platform which they had erected hurriedly 
under a canvas covering. We were chilled to 
the bone and a little depressed by the dim light 
of two tottering torches but we gave what 
spirit we could to the show and left to their 
hurrahs, never having clearly understood to 
whom we had really played. 

The next morning we left Paris amidst the 
customary confusion of mysterious servants 
arriving in the hotel lobby at the last moment 
and the laundry that always returns only in 
time to be carried under one's arm. 

We had already begun the shedding process 
so familiar to even the most experienced trav- 
ellers who come over in war time. Most of us 
had left our trunks containing quantities of 
soap and shoes and sugar in the keeping of our 
landlords, having cussed out the misinformants 
on the other side who had told us that these 

[38] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

and many other things were not to be had in 
Paris. 

Our first meal in the hotel had shown us that 
Paris was suffering from less food restriction 
than we were at home, and our first promenade 
up the Avenue de I'Opera had opened our eyes 
to the astonishing fact that, now as always, 
everything in the world was to be bought in 
Paris and many military things in much snap- 
pier more convenient design than at home. 
Even the woollens of which we had been 
warned there was such a scarcity, were dis- 
played in every outfitter's window. 

We had meant to write home about all these 
things for the sake of other benighted travel- 
lers who would no doubt follow us, and now we 
were leaving Paris without having found time 
for more than the conventional cable home 
"Well and happy." 

At the station again confusion and distress, 
no porters, insufiicient help for the weighing 
and checking of baggage, no compartments to 
be reserved, necessity for showing passports 
and getting movement orders stamped in order 
to "check out," train about to leave and only 
one or two bored officials to serve long lines of 

[39] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

excited travellers, indifferent shrugging of 
shoulders on part of officials and yet some way 
or other when the toy train at last departed, 
amidst shrill boastful whistling, all those who 
had hoped to be aboard had managed to be 
there, hot, angry and perspiring to be sure, 
but present. 

Some hours later our unit of six was clatter- 
ing up the main street of Chaumont, one of 
the most picturesque, most historic villages in 
France. We were on our way to the principal 
hotel at G. H. Q. — ^meaning the General 
Headquarters of the American Army in 
France. If we had put on a wishing cap and 
succeeded in winning our wish we could scarce- 
ly have found ourselves in a more fortunate 
spot as a starting point for our campaign of 
the American camps. 

Even before we reached our hotel we were 
receiving familiar hellos from every side and 
before we had had time to register and get to 
our rooms we had had to put our luggage down 
time and again to shake hands with old friends 
from England, America, anywhere and every- 
where for to G. H. Q. sooner or later comes 
almost every one engaged in the business of 

[40] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

war. High officials, war correspondents, 
magazine writers, camera and "movie" men, 
Red Cross workers, canteen officers, American 
politicians and millionaires over draft age on 
their way to the front to catch a quick glimpse 
of the war, spies, staff officers, supply agents, 
all kinds, colom's and conditions of men of all 
orders and ranks and degrees of preferment. 

We got to our rooms as soon as we could 
for we were scheduled to give a performance 
that same night in one of the Y. ^I. C. A. huts 
on the edge of the town. When one of the 
young women of the company ventured a criti- 
cism of her room the tired proprietress ex- 
plained in rapid-fire French that we were for- 
tunate to get any rooms at all since no less a 
personage than a General had been obliged to 
sleep on a park bench the night before with his 
men around him on the groimd. 

]My room was amusing in its outlook. From 
my window I looked down upon the back 
court of the hotel, with the old fashioned pump 
and stone laundry basins, plump -armed French 
maids preparing the vegetables for the even- 
ing meal, cats and mongrel dogs on the kitchen 
tables or under them, pigeons pecking at what- 



TROUPIXG FOR THE TROOPS 

ever they could find on the tables or under 
them, pigs grunting from a nearby pen, to 
remind the proprietor that it was also their 
supper time, guests calling in bad French from 
their windows to the servants in the court- 
yard below — ^in short, a typical French small 
town hotel, and back of this domestic scene of 
disorder and confusion a picturesque vine cov- 
ered arch of heavy masonry through which one 
caught a vista of winding moss-grown steps 
and tangled garden that the greatest water 
colour artist of them all might have been de- 
lighted to paint. France ! "La belle France !" 

Before our hats were even off Isaac Marcos- 
son burst into the room, fresh from the front 
and on his way up the street to the barracks 
now occupied by General Pershing and his 
staff and known by the boys as G. H. Q. 

I had never before kissed Isaac Marcosson 
but in the excitement of the moment I did so 
now. I am inclined to think that Mary Young 
who was with me also kissed him. She had 
stopped off at G. H. Q. to see our perform- 
ance before going on into Joan of Ai'c's coun- 
try to resume the playing of "Baby IVIine" 
while she rehearsed in the forthcoming pageant 

[42] 



TPtOUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

of "Joan" in which she was to play the maid 
herself. 

In a few moments JMary, Isaac Marcosson 
and I were curled up on the foot of the high 
French bed, the only comfortable place in the 
room to sit, eating from a tin of chocolates that 
he had bought at a Northern canteen and remi- 
niscing about our last meeting at Carnegie 
Hall in Xew York just after he had delivered 
his maiden lecture, and here we were such a 
short time afterward in such a strange place 
under such different conditions and he, in the 
meantime had seen three battle fronts. Pie 
touched upon a few of the high points and 
humorous incidents of his latest experiences 
with the rapidity of which he alone is master 
and went on his way with a promise to see us 
later that evening. 

When we reached the hut where we were to 
play that night we found it so packed that we 
could scarcely force our way through to get 
back of the stage and the green silesia curtains 
that had been provided for us. Bodies hung 
through the windows, heads protruded from 
the skylights and although we were early we 
were told that our audience had been in its 

[43] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

seats, eager for good places, for as much as two 
hours before our arrival. 

We gave our best and from the cheers that 
came back from the boys and the invitations to 
stay with them forever, they evidently found 
our best good enough for them. It was a won- 
derful night, or so it seemed to us. Generals, 
Colonels, JNIajors and Lieutenants also thanked 
us and assured us that we had given them and 
their men the best show they had seen since 
they left America. The officers were not sup- 
posed to attend this performance as we were 
to give a special performance for them later 
in the week but several of them had "slipped 
in" as they put it, and some of them remained 
for a cup of chocolate and an American dough- 
nut with us in the back office of the "Y" hut, 
where the hostess and the secretarj^ of the hut 
had graciously prepared a little supper for us. 

When we got back to the hotel who should 
emerge out of the darkness of the court but 
Arthur Ruhl who had been waiting for our re- 
turn. He too was down from the Front, hav- 
ing just finished some new work for Colliers 
which he had managed to get "passed" by the 
censor that afternoon. The only thing that 

[44] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

prevented him from being completely happy 
was the prospect of having to sleep in the hotel 
bath tub that night, a fate that frequently 
overtakes late arrivals. He was rescued later, 
however, by Charles Edward Kloeber, one of 
America's most picturesque war correspon- 
dents and general war time pet. 

And so the hello's and good-byes continued 
from early morning until late at night. The 
next day at luncheon I met a fashionable West- 
chester woman whose country place I had 
passed, near mine, for years. She was wear- 
ing a Red Cross uniform and her husband, one 
of the brainiest men in New York State, was 
serving on General Pershing's staff. She and 
I had never known each other at home but by 
the time we rose from the luncheon table we 
were fast friends. 

The first few days at G. H. Q. will always 
seem like a glimpse of fairy land to me, the 
sunlit court of our funny hotel with excited 
French waitresses screaming at generals and 
privates alike, the gay little groups around the 
dirty, iron tables, war correspondents, staff of- 
ficers, and all sorts of birds of passage, the 

[45] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

quaint winding streets with huge dust-covered 
military trucks dashing through them, the 
guard mount, each morning; the wonderful 
marine band organised by Damrosch himself at 
the time of his last visit to see General Per- 
shing, the hours I stole for dreaming in a still, 
secluded garden back of the old bastille that 
looked down hundreds of feet upon a beautiful 
valley dotted with fields, homes, flower-strewn 
gardens and hemmed in on the other side by 
low-lying hills over which the broad white road 
made its way toward Paris — a valley through 
which CiEsar himself had fought, and on the 
other side of the town from a high bluff an- 
other viev/ even more lovely of a lazy, poplar 
edged canal winding in and out through a 
still green meadow, a stream having broken 
from its banks and run wilfully away in an op- 
posite direction, children of the peasants wad- 
ing in the stream, cattle gi*azing by its side, 
a white road winding out of sight up the val- 
ley toward a famous old chateau where no less 
a personage than General Pershing himself 
was housed, and all this within ear-shot of the 
shrill whistle of French locomotives bearing 
troops back and forward from the front line 

[46] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

trenches and not infrequently Gferman prison- 
ers. It was a rare sight to see a real troop train 
come home laden with all the paraphernalia of 
war, men lounging ahout in the JBtat cars or 
hanging theh' feet out of the open doorways 
while they played cards or checkers, horses and 
straw and fighting apparatus all piled in to- 
gether and one day a curious sight came by — 
an entire train load of Grerman prisoners 
guarded only by wounded French soldiers. 
These were glimpses one caught of what was 
going on further up the hne, but the sunshine 
and the laughter seemed at first to make aU the 
pain of it unreal. Then, too, the first camps 
that we played differed so much in avocation 
and personelle that we were constantly excit- 
ed by surprises. At the Gas School where 
deadly and important experiments are made 
we dined at the officers* mess which was served 
in what looked like an iron-lined hogshead. I 
pricked up my ears when I heard one of the 
men say he had to be up early in the morning 
to "shoot dogs." He explained to me later 
that it is necessary for them to shoot poison- 
ous gases into the lungs of the dogs, rabbits 
and even snails to discover ways of combating 

[47] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

their effect. He told me, too, of the experiments 
being made by injecting certain fluids or gela- 
tins in the horses' hoofs and sealing them up 
there to protect the beasts from the poisoned 
earth where deadly gases have been used. 

Dogs are procured from the neighbouring 
villages or shipped up from Paris by the car 
load. I began to wonder if the improved con- 
dition I had noticed amongst the Paris cab 
horses meant only that the fittest were spared 
from experimentation. ''C'est la guerre.'* 

On our way out from the camp that night 
a soldier jumped on the running board of our 
car as we passed one of the sentry posts, re- 
fused to accept our countersign and ordered 
our chauffeur to take us to the guard-house. 
We were haled before a sleepy-looking officer 
who pronounced us suspicious characters, said 
he had heard of no entertainment being per- 
mitted that night in the camp and gave orders 
that we be locked up for trial in the morning. 
Tommy Gray, one of our players produced his 
false whiskers and other stage "props" in sup- 
port of his contention that he was a mere actor. 
Will Morrisey offered to play his violin to 

[48] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

prove that he was an * 'entertainer," Lois Mere- 
dith, our ingenue went into giggling hysterics 
to prove her right to the title, Elizabeth Brill 
our leading chanteuse became properly tem- 
peramental and I argued as calmly as my bad 
disposition would permit, but all to no avail, we 
were about to be led forth to a night of tor- 
ture when a captain who had been chief host 
at the supper after the performance appeared 
in the doorway and "gave us the laugh" and we 
realised for the first time that we had been the 
victims of a clever practical joke. The story 
went the rounds of headquarters the next day 
and for some reason or other seemed to add to 
our popularity. 

Of course it made confirmed sceptics of us 
and a few nights later when one of the boys 
brought in a smaU German balloon that had 
fallen near the tent in which we were playing 
we refused at first to even approach it for in- 
spection for we thought they had concealed 
some explosive inside of it. 

From the Gas Camp we were taken to the 
wood choppers' camp where hundreds of 
sturdy Americans, many of them engineers, 
were engaged night and day in cutting down 

[49] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

and transporting to headquarters a forest in 
which ]Marie Antoinette had once played. 
Winter was coming on and it was necessary to 
work fast before the snows came, though even 
the snow would not stop them, so they said. 
To get to this camp we abandoned our big 
army Renault for the first time and took to 
Ford cars for the roads were thought difficult. 
Tliey would not seem so to the average Ameri- 
can. We were rather relieved to lose the Re- 
nault for with it we lost Conde, the speed fiend, 
who had been driving us up and do^vn hill at 
sixty miles an hour and barely touching the 
earth, when we reached a level stretch of road. 
When we ventured a protest he reminded us 
that he had been the favourite driver of the late 
President of France and had also driven in the 
automobile races in New York. In his opinion 
this evidently made him immune from acci- 
dent and ci'iticism. One night when we were 
irritated into being very sharp with him he ad- 
mitted that he had been driving fast out of 
temper because three bees had "bited" him that 
day. Later on when I offered him ten francs 
to soothe his ruffled feelings he di^ew himself up 
proudly and reminded me that he was a soldier 

[50] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

in the Army. When I confessed my faux pas 
to a millionaire American that night he told 
me that he'd made a fool of himself by trying 
to tip a chauffeur that had been loaned to him 
from the Army Transportation Department 
and had discovered that the chauffeur was 
President of a company at home in which he 
merely owned stock and the chauffeur had 
twice as much money as he had. Such awk- 
ward situations as these leave one entirely at 
the mercy of one's driver over here and when 
we got into the dark woods I was thankful that 
Conde was not at the wheel. Oh, those de- 
licious woods, the smell of smoke from burn- 
ing autumn leaves] We picked up a doctor 
who was walking to a camp beyond ours to see 
some negro boys. He too was rejoicing in the 
clean fresh odour of the woods. WTiat a re- 
lief after the smelly courtyards of tlie French 
hotels. He said France had knocked his germ 
theories all hollow for if there were anything in 
germs all France would have been dead long 
ago. 

As usual we found our audience had been 
waiting for us long before the appointed time. 
They were a fine looking lot of young "hus- 

[51] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

kies" and how they did laugh at the show and 
how they did cheer, lined up either side of the 
wood road, as we called our good-byes to them 
and their camp fires. 

The next night was "negro camp night" and 
IVe never seen so many square feet of white 
teeth before nor since. The Commander told 
me that he had four companies of these boys 
when he landed and he loved them. He'd lost 
a great many of them because they were un- 
able to endure the damp and the cold and two 
of his companies had been detailed at South- 
em piorts to work on the new American-made 
docks. We had seen one of these docks before 
landing at Bordeaux and the brave fearless 
way in which it juts out to meet in-coming 
ships is guaranteed to tlirill even the dullest 
edged American. 

I could imagine these black good natured 
faces in front of me much more habitually gay 
down on the Southern docks than way up here 
in the north preparing to go "over the top" to 
what they call a "good mornin' Jesus." They 
had forgotten their troubles for the moment 
however, and so had General du Pont in the 
front row and ^lajor Wills, the Paymaster 

[52] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

of the Marine Corps, and the Chief Censor of 
the War Correspondents and several other 
friends who had stopped in at our hotel to see 
us on their way down to Paris and decided to 
attach themselves to our party for the evening 
to "hear the coons laugh." And how those 
boys did laugh, and those teeth ! 

Wlien our show was over the boj^s volun- 
teered a return entertainment and Tvdth their 
Commander's permission they hopped onto the 
stage and did some wonderful buck dancing 
and when we all piled into our cars and headed 
back for G. H. Q. our chief comedian again 
declared that it was the best war he had ever 
attended. 

The next night we left our hotel early and 
drove, or rather flew, for Conde was with us 
again, over miles of beautiful rolling hills to 
the Ordnance Camp. We were to have mess 
with the officers and give a show for them after- 
ward. This function seemed to take on more 
dignity than any of the others, perhaps be- 
cause we were made serious before dinner by 
being shown through the laboratory and the 
class and experimental rooms where row upon 

[53] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

row of hellisli contrivances for killing were on 
exhibition, some of them of our own invention, 
some of them souvenirs from the enemy. It 
was the first time that I had known that pow- 
der comes in hard brittle sticks, some of it looks 
and feels almost exactly like uncooked spa- 
ghetti or macaroni. We were aftei*ward told 
that the young captain who explained the 
mechanism of some of the more deadly bombs, 
was a very great genius and had just made a 
discovery of great importance. He had the 
clear blue, far-seeing eyes of a genius and 
looked like the sort of young man the world 
needs. 

After the "show,** as We call it, we found 
that some of the officers who were billeted in a 
town below, through which we must pass, had 
prepared a supper for us in tlie village tavern, 
and were determined to way-lay us. They did 
so and when I looked round the long, narrow, 
dingy walled room lit by a few sputtering 
candles and surveyed the picturesque, incon- 
gruous party at the long table, the blue of an 
occasional French uniform off-setting the kha- 
ki of our boys, a chaplain whom we had picked 
up on the way, the gay tinsel and chiffon of 

[54] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

our gowns, and over it all the haze of cigarette 
smoke and through the hum of voices the pop- 
ping of cliampagne corks from bottles of which 
the women did not partake, a little song, much 
laughter, it looked like a scene from Fran9ois 
Villon, and I felt that life was being made 
much too easy and too picturesque for us, but 
the very next day we got our first introduction 
to the more serious side of it all. When we 
came do^Ti for breakfast in the court we found 
the place almost deserted. I looked at my 
watch tliinls;ing that I was later than usual. 
On the contrary I was earher. I asked one of 
the habitues of the place what had become of 
eveiybody — meaning more especially the war 
correspondents, journalists, and staff officials. 

He said that every one was up at G. H. Q. 
and I thought he looked rather sinister 
about it. 

A little later I heard a young lieutenant at 
the next table say that thousands of troops had 
passed through the village during the night on 
their way to the front. 

I went for a walk and was amazed to see 
how many grey camions had suddenly stolen 
into the streets as from nowhere. 

[55] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

At luncheon when the men returned from 
G. H. Q. there was a silent expectant some- 
thing in the air and a constraint about discuss- 
ing something that every one apparently felt 
rather than knew. 

Later as we got more familiar with the tra- 
ditions of war we came to know that this sud- 
den suspension of social candoui' — this tighten- 
ing of the moral fibre, always precedes the dec- 
laration of each big "offensive" and until the 
big guns are actually firing and the knowledge 
of the manoeuvre has become common prop- 
erty one has a feeling of being suspended in 
space awaiting some unavoidable cataclysm 
and not being permitted to discuss one's fore- 
bodings with one's neighbour. 

So impossible is it to determine the extent of 
an "offensive" at its inception that it is only 
on looking back upon it that history is able to 
label it in relation to its most salient point. 
This movement was to be known in history as 
the "Saint Mihiel Drive." 

We knew nothing of all this however when 
we were loaded into the car after luncheon, to 
"show" in our first hospital. It was a base 

[56] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

hospital on the edge of the town. Even yet I 
don't feel like writing about it. I'll never get 
away from the consciousness of that side of 
war again no matter how funny the stories 
round the supper table. No matter how bright 
the morning sunshine, there will always be 
that dark, gaping, subterranean passage under- 
neath all the flow of chatter and chaff and 
art. Of all the hungry disappointed eyes that 
looked out from those grey coverlets, eyes nar- 
rowed by pain, I think the childhke eyes of the 
dimib, puzzled negroes will haunt me longest. 
They made me think of wounded animals who 
had never harmed any one and who could only 
wonder at their fate. 

On our way home we passed several lines of 
great dust-covered camions on their way to- 
ward "the front'* and when we got back to the 
hotel we found what we called our "camp fol- 
lowers" waiting in the court for us, young 
lieutenants who had attached themselves to 
our party without consulting us, who insisted 
upon carrjdng our coats and usually ended by 
losing them, who frisked about like gay young 
puppies regardless of what mood one might be 
in. I was tired and longed to get to my room 

[57] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

and I said irritably to one of our unit that I 
wished we could lose the infants for a while. 

I had occasion to regret that remark the 
very next afternoon and I shall always re- 
member it with shame. Wlien we came out 
from luncheon there were our "Newfoundland 
pups" as usual in the court but their faces were 
grave and their smiles a little forced and their 
"roll-ups" were slimg across their shoulders. 
They'd been suddenly called "to the front." 

We knew what that meant. The white faces 
of those poor boys in the hospital yesterday 
rose between me and the red-clieeked youths 
who stood before us now. They held out their 
hands one by one, each with some message to 
the girl he had left behind in the States. And 
right here I want to make my first criticism of 
Uncle Sam even though I may be hanged for 
it. If he could know how his boys over here 
have lost confidence in both his conscience and 
his ability to deliver their messages to their 
loved ones at home he would be sorry. 

"It's pretty tough," so one of them put it, 
"when you're 'going over the top' to feel you 
can't even get a last word back to your girl." 

He showed me the picture of his girl, young 
[58] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

ttrave, sweet and trusting. She was sitting out- 
side a lonely looking shack in North Dakota. 
She seemed to be looking out over the plains 
far the return of **her boy.*' 

The boy told me how he had written to Her 
every single day since he left, nearly nine 
months ago, and how he had received a letter 
frqm her only yesterday saying that she had 
had only four letters from him since his depar- 
ture. He had figured out tliat according to 
that average, it would mean that more than two 
hundred and fifty ships must have been sunk 
each bearing a letter from him. This of course 
was impossible, so what had they done with his 
letters? "Dim^ped them into the sea," was his 
conclusion, "It saves trouble," I'm sorry to 
say that is the cynical conclusion of many of 
the boys over here. I suggested to this chap 
tliat he might have written things that the cen- 
sor couldn't pass. "No diance," he answered. 
"The first thing a fellow gets in his head over 
here is that all he can write home is "well and 
love" and, then, half a dozen other guys have 
to i-ead it before it gets a fair start, but some of 
us boys would like to get even that much back 
if we could, but I guess there's not much 

[59] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

chance of my girl getting a last message from 
me unless one of you folks run across her." 

I took her name and had another look at the 
dreamy face in the photograph, that sublime 
line of Masefield's came back to me, — "Each 
man follows his Helen with her gift of grief." 
How many of these men would return to their 
Helens? 

AH the voices became blurred now in a 
general bu^z of good-byes, there was a genial 
reaching out of hands and meeting of eyes that 
said only too plainly that they knew it might 
be for the last time. I couldn't speak and I 
knew it would not be considered sporty of me 
to cry. I just held out my hand and nodded, 
and oh, the ache in my throat! It w^as my first 
necessity for keeping a stiff upper lip and I 
wondered how mothers and sisters and sweet- 
hearts live through such hours without break- 
ing the courage of their men when I could suf- 
fer so about men who, a moment before, had 
been only a nuisance to me. The mothers and 
sweethearts of these boys would have been- 
proud if they could have seen them turning 
their faces to the front that day, each eager to 
"go over the top." Thev were a brave looking 

[60] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

lot, God grant we may see them again in 
America as whole in mind and body as then. 

At eight the next morning the speed maniac, 
Conde, was waiting in his big Renault to take 
us away from G. H. Q. to what and where? 
We had been told the name of our next head- 
quarters but it meant little to us. We knew 
only that it was in the "advanced zone." 



[611 



PART II: THE ADVANCED ZONE 

In the Argorme 
Wednesday night, 
11:15 

Sept. 25, 1918. 
Within a few miles of us the greatest battle 
in history is just starting. Big guns are thun- 
dering, the lights are flashing across No Man's 
Land, and air ships are buzzing overhead in 
the starlight and yet I am able to turn my 
back upon this and a golden moon and sit here 
in a tiny barracks room on the head of one of 
the three cots upon which I and two of the 
other players sleep, and write; for it is all so 
wonderful that one feels an impulse to share 
it with those who are not here, even while 
eveiything tempts one outside. 

Day after day, night after night, camions 

have streamed along "The Sacred Road" — 

which is what the French call the broad white 

highway from Bar-le-duc to Verdun — infan- 

. [62] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

try, cavalry, machine guns, tanks, one endless 
procession manned by Americans, French, 
Singalese, Amanites, Chinese, African negroes 
and American negroes — a line broken here and 
there by the pompous, cars of high officials, 
French or American, ministers of state, and 
generals. And back and forth on the newly 
laid American railroad tracks at the foot of the 
hiU on which we are now billeted large Ameri- 
can engines have been bearing hither and 
thither for days heavy artillery, gasoline, pro- 
visions and ammunition and sections of port- 
able houses and long sections of empty Red 
Cross hospital cars. To-morrow these cars 
with the big red crosses painted on their sides 
will come back from the front — but not empty. 
Many of them will bear back to the waiting 
nurses behind the lines some of the boys that 
we have seen staggering along "The Sacred 
Road" these past few nights, exhausted by long 
marches and the sixty pound packs on their 
backs — boys who were so weary that when the 
occasional order came to halt they would sink 
back in the roadway too tired to drag them- 
selves to one side or to even remove their packs, 
and too numb to care for the huge camions that 

[63] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

whizzed by so close to them that we, watching, 
feared for their lives. The surgeon who stood 
by my side explained to me that when one of 
these boys could no longer keep up with his 
comrades he was divested of his pack and con- 
sidered good for six more miles. If he could 
then stagger no further he was allowed to drop 
out imtil he was treated — ^his feet were bathed 
and protectors put over the blisters and then a 
man who would ordinarily be told to stay in 
bed for days — ^was shoved back into the march 
and told to catch up with his regiment — "and 
many of these chaps" he said "are college boys 
or mother's pets, tenderly reared." I looked at 
the ones*who lay before me along the roadside 
— ^in the mud or on the wet earth. "That boy 
over there," I said to the Doctor, "looks as 
though he were dead. Let's speak to him." 
The doctor shook his head. "He's stiU alive 
but he's too tired to answer," he said. "He 
wants only to be left alone — they all do." 

We walked on up the road, past what seemed 
miles of these same mute listless figures. Some- 
times the order would come to march and they 
would stagger to their feet and move on — 

[64] 



GROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

still without even a murmur. "Boots I boots! 
boots !" Kipling knew. 

The surgeon who walked by my side was a 
wealthy southerner who had been requested by 
the Government to accept the direction of a 
large corps of surgeons and Red Cross workers. 
He had three homes in America, a devoted 
family and a large practice and yet he was glad 
to sacrifice all these, and more, to sleep on a 
hard cot in an advanced war zone, if he was 
fortunate enough to be spared for a few hom^ 
to sleep, and he pretended that he liked "corn 
willie." His big, heavy voice grew very ten- 
der when he spoke of his doughboys and yet he 
told me quite calmly while we stood under a 
wayside cross, bearing the drooping figure of 
the Christ — a cross surrounded by pines and 
marking one of the bloodiest cross-ways in 
France, he told me that his first duty and any 
surgeon's first duty on the battlefield is to 
treat first the men who need treatment least, 
for these can be made to quickly fight again 
while the more fatally wounded are only a drag 
on the army and are to be treated only out of 
compassion after the more fortunate ones have 
been put on their feet. A few moments later 

[65] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

this same big fellow gave to a tired doughboy 
his last cigarette— the cigarette he had been 
treasuring to smoke on his way home. "C'est 
la guerre," he said when I smiled at his tender 
action so in contrast to tlie harsh principles of 
procedure that he had just outUned. 

"C'est la guerre — C'est la guerre!" Every- 
where from every one on every side one hears 
it. It comes rumbling back to me now from 
the first night when we pressed into the "ad- 
vanced zone." But that night it was said mer- 
rily almost in a spirit of derision for we were 
dining in a famous old chateau — one in which 
General Joffre had lived during the battle of 
the INIame and in which Napoleon was said to 
have taken refuge when he was trying to es- 
cape capture. The wine which we were enjoy- 
ing had been poured from bottles whose corks 
were mildewed from long storage in the vaults 
of the chateau — a late September sun was 
dancing in and out between the branches of the 
trees and the shadows lay gently on the long 
peaceful lawn and some of our players were 
dancing on the terrace to the strains of the 
band that had come to serenade us before as- 
sisting in the entertainment which we were 

[66] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

about to give in the eleventh century stable 
which had been lighted by candles and decorat- 
ed with flags for our performance. 

Life seemed very idyllic and gay tliis night 
and death very far away, and yet the next 
morning these same oflScers would be leading 
their men in sham battle to prepare them for 
their part in the great death struggle that was 
bound to come soon to many of them. It came 
sooner than we expected and the next day we 
were ordered to "double up" on our perform- 
ances and play our four days' schedule in that 
region in two days as the entire division of 
forty thousand or more was to move forward 
to relieve another di\dsion that was going im- 
mediately to the front. We watched many of 
them get under way — fine stalwart fellows, 
with the wild-cat insignia on the sleeves of 
their uniforms. I saw their handsome General 
later in Paris taking his first "permission" 
since the war and it was amusing to watch the 
admiring glances of the French girls change 
into slightly shocked expressions as they be- 
held the black cat on his sleeve which to them 
suggests a very questionable vocation. 

While these forty thousand "Wild Cats" 
[67] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

were moving forward we were called back to 
Paris fo be fitted with gas masks, iron helmets, 
"roll ups," cots, and blankets before proceed- 
ing yet further into the advanced zone. 

On our way to Paris we stopped for lunch- 
eon at Chaumont, G. H. Q. and here we found 
many old friends and got our first word of the 
American victory at St. Mihiel and two men 
who had been in the action the night before 
told us how the old men and women in the re- 
gained territory who had thought France lost 
to them forever had thrown their arms about 
the knees of the on-marching Americans and 
kissed their feet and wept. How also that not 
one woman in all that newly conquered area 
had been left undefiled by their late German 
conquerors and how all the young girls had 
been carried away by the now retreating Ger- 
mans. 

When we reached Paris that night it was in 
time to experience the first air raid that Paris 
had seen in a month and one of the heaviest 
raids it had ever seen — ^and as history has since 
proven, the last. 

It came just as I had tucked myself in for 
[68] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

the night. My first thought was that I was 
utterly alone and I was a little sorry for my- 
self. I wished that I knew some one to whom 
I could go to get "snuggled up." Not know- 
ing any such person and not even remember- 
ing on what floor to find any of the other mem- 
bers of the company I lay quite still and wait- 
ed. There were occasional flashes of light from 
the barrage firing on the enemy planes and the 
changing direction of this firing caused tlie 
sound of it to die away and return like the rum- 
ble of thunder. After a time I heard voices 
in the corridor. I shpped on my dressing gown 
and went out. Three men in white pyjamas 
were standing in the doorway next to mine. 
They asked me if I was nervous and whether 
I would not like to go down to the cellar. I re- 
plied that I was a fatahst and one of them 
laughed and called that a good idea. I went 
back to bed and with the barrage still thunder- 
ing and dying away and returning, I finally 
went to sleep. 

The next morning I learned that not one of 
our company had taken the precaution of go- 
ing into the ceUar while every French person in 

[69] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

the hotel had done so. This was explained by 
an old American resident on the ground that 
the nerves of the French had been unsettled by 
a long succession of raids, while to us a raid 
was still in the nature of a novelty. 

Armed with all sorts of military orders the 
next morning we set out on our quest for gas 
masks and helmets and had our first lesson in 
the use of the mask. It wasn't a verj^ cheery 
business. The fat pufi*y lieutenant delegated 
to instruct us seemed very bored with us and 
we thought him in danger of apoplexy from 
having so often to blow up his cheeks and to 
hold the air in them while adjusting his experi- 
mental mask. To concentrate our attention on 
the business in hand, and on liimself, he told us 
terrifying stories about what had happened to 
others before us who had been stupid or slow 
in adjusting their masks in battles and he re- 
peated the old saying about there being only 
two kinds of men where gas attacks were con- 
cerned — the quick and the dead. 

After more than an hour of tliis exhausting 
drill when he had alternately bullied and 
coaxed us to keep pace with his rapid counting 
— and when each woman in the party had been 

[70] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

made to feel that her hair was a crime against 
nature because it would get entangled in the 
straps of her mask and when most of the men 
had decided that there was something defective 
in their teeth, nose, ears or lungs — after all this 
boredom the young instructor swooped down 
upon Elizabeth Brice and me with an accusing 
eye, thrust his fingers under the edges of our 
masks just beneath our chins and thundered at 
us that our faces were too small for our masks. 
We thought it would have been more gallant 
of him to have put it the other way round but 
we were too cowed and exhausted to protest 
and I personally felt that I would rather be 
gassed than go through this ordeal again and 
said so. 

Again I was properly rebuked and informed 
that the army was not concerned with my pref- 
erence in such matters and that we would not 
be allowed to enter the danger zone until our 
masks did fit properly. 

Telephoning followed and it was ascertained 
that there was a carload of new masks — small 
sizes — on the way from Bordeaux but since this 
car was in charge of a "Frog" — as the lieuten- 
ant put it — there was no telling whether the 

[71] 



.TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

masks would arrive during the present war. 
Anyway we could call the next morning and 
see. 

This was rather a let down after our impa- 
tience to get off to "the front" and we were 
feeling a little depressed when we reached the 
hotel. 

In front of the hotel we found Senator Hol- 
lis waiting ^vith a friend from one of the South- 
em Encampments. 

The Senator suggested that we join them for 
dinner at Montmartre. We were tu-ed and 
ready for our beds but we remembered that the 
Senator had lost his only boy in the air service 
less than a w^eek ago and we knew that we 
could help him by sharing the burden of enter- 
taining his friend and also by tiying to keep his 
mind off his loss. 

How little I had knoT^n Montmartre in the 
old days — the days when I'd dashed up the hill 
in the wild hours of the night in a cab or taxi 
with a lot of laughing Americans whose only 
idea was to use Pigale's and the IVIoulin Rouge 
as a stopping place for another drink. There 
were no cabs nor taxis to draw us up the hill 
to-night. We took the "INIetro" to the foot of 

[72] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

the mountain, then climbed tier upon tier of 
steep stone steps — stopping at every landing 
to look down on Paris as we had never seen it 
before — Paris lit by the setting sun on the one 
side and the rising moon on tlie other — dim, 
mj^sterious, alluring Paris. I loved it for 
the first time in my life — and I knew for the 
first time the lure of Montmartre — ^how many 
lovers had climbed these steps in the moonlight 
and halted at each landing and looked down 
into the mist and then into each other's eyes. 
How little would the rich tourist ever know of 
the real Montmartre. 

When we reached the top of tlie hill and 
made om^ way along the middle of the street on 
the rough cobble stones, we passed the Cuckoo 
and other famous little cafes made so by hectic 
writers and we stopped outside a semi-out- 
door eating place from which we could look 
across the street at the Sacre Coeur. The seats 
were aU taken at the outdoor tables so we gave 
our dinner order and went on to the place of 
the Martyr to watch the afterglow of the sun- 
set and wait our turn at table. 

For the first time I saw the statue at the foot 
of the Cathedral — the statue of the IMartyr that 

[73] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

gave the mountain its name — the statue that 
has looked down so many years on gay, wicked, 
sorrowing Paris. 

After dinner we wandered through the 
crooked narrow streets searching for the old 
Moulin Rouge. We were told it had been 
burned — probably by an exploding shell. A 
little further on we passed the Black Cat — it 
was too early to go home — we went inside. 
Here again was the real Montmartre. A funny, 
low ceiling vaultlike room with plaster walls 
daubed with cheap drawings, fine etchings, 
nude paintings, charcoal cartoons, black cats; 
bits of red and white plaid gingham, faded 
leaves, shelves containing pewter mugs, brass 
bowls and all sorts of discarded bric-a-brac, a 
platform at the far end of the room with a 
piano on it, a small picture screen behind it, a 
bar to the right of it and a stair to the left of it. 
Benches in the room and long tables and all of 
these occupied by all sorts and conditions of 
humans. Frenchmen, and French soldiers, 
American doughboys and ofiicers, and here and 
there a cheap cocotte — and smoke ! One could 
scarcely see the length of the room. 

The entertainment w^as being given by 
[74] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

French soloists and by naughty tales told in 
silhouette by paper figures on the "movie 
screen." 

After an interval some one asked one of the 
Americans present to sing. He passed along 
the word that ^liss Brice of our company 
could sing and in a jiffy she was forced on to 
the platform and Mr. ^Morrisey of our com- 
pany was rattling off an accompaniment for 
her. The French and the Americans were 
wild with delight. She was given a "double 
claque" and made to sing until she was hoarse 
then we went out into the street again and 
glanced almost with envy at some of the gay 
little gi'oups that we saw around some of the 
small bars, then we picked our way down the 
steep steps and farewell ^lontmartre. 

The next morning our gas masks had not 
arrived but the young lieutenant having ap- 
parently had a good night's sleep decided that 
we could proceed with the large masks and use 
them as a camouflage if questioned en route, 
provided we would exchange them at one of 
the hospital bases further up where he had re- 
cently shipped some small masks for Red 
Cross nurses. 

[75] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

We went to another part of the town for our 
iron hehnets and then returned to the "Y" 
armed with our new implements of war. 

Here we accumulated our "roll-ups" blank- 
ets and cots, for we could be sure of no bedding 
accommodations in the region to which we 
were going. How we came to detest these 
blankets and cots during the following weeks 
when we staggered under them by day and 
tried to cling to them by night! And how we 
longed to throw away our gas masks and hel- 
mets and all the rest of our cursed parapher- 
nalia and how weary we grew always having to 
go back for one or the other of these that some 
one in the party had always forgotten. 

Our first irritation began at the Paris sta- 
tion when our trappings became entangled 
with those of other cross grained individuals 
also pushing and jostling to make the over- 
crowded train. But once we were on the edge 
of the country where real battles had been 
fought and looking out the car windows at 
shell holes, graves, grass-grown trenches and 
heaps of mortar and brick where villages had 
been, we forgot all our lesser trials and began 

[76] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

to suspect something of the seriousness of the 
great tragedy that we were approaching. 

A little further up we began to see on the 
white roadways, paralleling the track, long 
lines of grey camions moving north "w^th men 
and supplies, then cavalry halted on the banks 
of the streams or canals for their noonday rest, 
then more shell holes — one with an impudent 
poppy nodding from its very brink, and hours 
and hours later, because the railways were con- 
gested with supply and hospital trains, we 
reached a town in the region of the Ai*gonne, 
which we were to use as a central point for our 
scouting tours — a toTVTi that was to be for many 
months a point of contact between the Ai-gonne 
trail and the more removed political and supply 
bases that fed one of the final battles of the 
war. Day and night, day and night, so close 
that one could scarcely pick one's way across 
the road, the great grey camions rumbled 
through the streets of the little village on their 
way to "The Sacred Road" that would lead 
them later toward the encounter. Some of the 
camions were loaded with men packed so tight 
that they made one think only of the animals 
that one sees in cattle cars — animals being 

[77] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

shipped to pens for slaughter. Other camions 
bore heavy fire arms and ammunition. 

The streets of the village and the hotels were 
filled with wayfarers, some of importance, 
some who had failed to connect with their regi- 
ments, a few I have reason to believe who were 
trying to desert — young boys who had been de- 
tached intentionally or otherwise from then* 
command and who feared to be caught by the 
local military police and thrown into jail. 

One of these boys had been sent back down 
the line with a detail of sick horses. He had 
delivered his horses but had failed to catch up 
again with his regiment and was wandering 
about the streets, frightened and hungiy when 
a kindly officer succeeded in getting his confi- 
dence and persuaded him to go to the police 
and tell his tale and escape capture and arrest. 

Sometimes a whole company of lost men 
would drift into the village, hungry and foot- 
sore and with no place to sleep, some mismider- 
standing having left them without proper pro- 
vision or conmiand. In such a case the "Y'* 
would allow them to sleep on the floor of the 
canteen and provide them, as far as possible, 
with chocolate. 

[78] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

We played two nights in this town in a 
theatre rented by the French to the "Y" 
for the price of the electricity. The show was 
a great success — it was the first that many of 
the boys had seen since leaving America. Our 
audience was made up of cavalrymen, infan- 
tiymen, airmen, doughboys and officers, French 
and American, for eveiy variety of soldier was 
either passing through the town or stationed 
near it. They all applauded and our own 
boys cheered and whistled. We were cold and 
hungry after our performance so the "Y" man 
led us back to the kitchen of the canteen where 
a tired soul was ladelling out hot chocolate 
from huge caldrons on the range and by the 
time we left the kitchen the floor of the hall 
leading to it had become so occupied by ex- 
hausted soldiers that we had to faii'ly step over 
them to get back to the street. 

There was no room for us in any of the ho- 
tels so we slept on our cots in a store room of 
the *'Y" across the street — if one can ever be 
said to sleep the first night he rides a cot. I 
was wakened early the next morning to find a 
dignified old gentleman — a French official in 
silk hat and civilian clothes — waiting outside 

[79] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

my door to apologise for what he considered 
the rude behaviour of the boys who had whis- 
tled at our show the night before. He said 
that he thought the performance most amusing 
and deserving of anything but derision, and it 
was only by the aid of one of his countrymen 
who was called in to interpret for us that I 
was able to make him understand that with the 
Americans whistling is a mark of approval, 
whereas in the French theatre it indicates the 
reverse. 

During the day we wandered about the 
streets and everywhere one turned there were 
opportunities for doing good. For instance 
some of those up here on the edge of the danger 
zone undergoing hardships were inclined to 
speak slightingly of those in Paris in executive 
positions who "had it easy," but when we 
pointed out to them that the chaps in Paris 
would give their ej^e teeth to be up near the 
firing line and that they were already dreading 
the day when they must go home and tell their 
sweethearts and families that they got only to 
Paris — then the chaps up nearer the front were 
happier again. 

I climbed up to a magnificent view on a high 
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TROUPIXG FOR THE TROOPS 

mountain back of the hotel. Soldiers crowded 
every nook and crannie of the ruined cathedral 
on the mountain's crest. They also were on 
their way to the front. At the foot of the hill, 
tied to an iron ring in an old stone wall, stood 
a wreck of a horse with a festering shrapnel 
wound in his shoulder. The poor beast strained 
in vain toward a few spears of grass growing 
just outside his reach. I gathered the grass 
and gave it to him. I found a sympathetic 
French girl in a shack near by and she found 
some hay for the beast. I was so gi*ateful that 
I cried. She brought me some water to wash 
the tears away and the sea that rolls between 
our two countries and the babble of tongues 
that confuse meant very little. 

I couldn't leave the horse until some one had 
adopted him and at last an ambulance came 
and took him away, still munching the hay that 
we transferred to the ambulance. 

Further down the street a French lad was 
carrying a fox terrier in his arms and crying 
over it — a passing camion had broken its leg. 
Again the tears came to my eyes and yet I 
looked dovm that same street at miles upon 
miles of human beings borne forward to slaugh- 

[81] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

ter in these same grey camions and I could not 
cry. It was all too horrible and too colossal 
— neither could I sleep that night for we were 
now in a hotel with rooms f rontmg on the street 
and the constant procession of hoofs and wheels 
on the cobble stones sounded to our tired nerves 
like the roar of the ocean. 

As I came in that evening I had noticed 
through the open door of the room next to 
mine a bent old figure in black, sitting near the 
window, gazing into space. Xear her on the 
bed sat a young girl so tragic and strained in 
her grief that I was sure she did not even know 
that the door stood ajar and I hurried into my 
ovra room feeling a little ashamed of having 
seen what was not meant for my eyes. 

Later in the night, as I turned my pillow 
again and again trying to make it fit into the 
tired spot in the back of my neck, I heard the 
door of the next room thrown open and I 
could ahnost see the girl who fell sobbing with 
her arms round her mother. I've heard many 
women cry in my life and some men but I 
never knew until then what agony could come 
out of a hmnan soul. And the mother spoke 
no word — it was no use. It was daylight when 

[82] 



TROUPIXG FOR THE TROOPS 

the sobs at last died into low infrequent moans 
and I learned that the girl had come from the 
death bed of her fiance whom she and the poor 
old mother had travelled days and nights to 
find. 

We played many nights in this town for the 
steady stream of troops continued to pass 
through it. We also played the engineering 
camps, supply camps and aviation camps there- 
abouts — there were sixteen of the last — and 
I shall never forget the first time that we drove 
up to one of the most important of these, the 
"First Pursuit Group." Eveiything as far as 
the eye could reach had been camouflaged, 
hangars, huts and tinicks and the gi*een and 
yellow new-art designs looked so fantastic and 
queer in the twilight. 

"The Little ]\Iajor," as he was fondly called 
by the men of his group, had arranged for lis 
to dine before the show in the mess tent at the 
foot of the hill, below a newly ploughed field. 
By the time dinner was over the rain was com- 
ing down in torrents, the field was a lake of 
mud and it was impossible to move the automo- 
bile that had brought us. 

We set out on foot toward the distant han- 
[83] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

gar where men from other aviation camps were 
also waiting for us. We were not supposed 
even to use our pocket flashes, for enemy obser- 
vation planes might be far above us in the black 
sky. The women carried their evening slip- 
pers under their arms, meaning to put them on 
later when we reached the hangar and it was 
not until we were at the very entrance of it 
that one of the girls discovered that one of her 
slippers was missing. Such a to-do! It was 
not an easy matter to get satm shppers in this 
benighted corner of the earth and we were 
headed for even more benighted regions. 

She was tired and depressed by the long puU 
through tlie mud and she fell onto a camp stool 
inside the big truck that had been rolled inside 
the hangar to serve as a dressing room and be- 
gan to cry. Her street shoes w^ere caked in 
mud to their tops and she refused to try to play 
in them. 

Three aviators immediately shot off into the 
darkness with one of our own men to search the 
muddy field for the missing slipper. They re- 
turned with it at last and by this time the audi- 
ence which we had heard but not seen were 
booing, whistlmg and clapping with impa- 

[84] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

tience. At last the missing slipper was re- 
covered and on the lady's small foot. I was 
frightfully nervous as I pushed aside the green 
silesia curtains that we always carried and 
cleared my throat to make the supposedly 
comic speech with which we always opened 
the show. I never could remember afterward 
just what I said, for of all the picturesque au- 
diences that I had ever seen this was certainly 
the most fantastic. 

There were twenty-five hundred men, so we 
were afterwards told, huddled together on the 
ground and above them imperilling their own 
lives and those of the men underneath, were 
hundreds of others intertwined in the huge steel 
framework supporting the largest hangar that 
I had ever seen. Some of the men seemed to 
be holding onto their perches like monkeys, 
their feet crossed round a bar of steel, others 
had made themselves comfortable on wide 
beams and were lying with their hands crossed 
under their heads, and all through the per- 
formance I could scarcely keep my mind on 
the lines of the playlet for trying to locate 
various members of the audience and fearing 
that some of them would tumble off their 

[85] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

perches when they released their hold to ap- 
plaud — and how they did applaud and yell, 
and how wild and picturesque it all looked in 
the fog that had crept in through the cracks 
and made golden circles round the dim torch 
light. And then came the whir of an enemy ob- 
servation plane overhead and a hush and no- 
thing said and then on with the show. 

The next day we were sent to a camp nearby 
where it was hoped that JNIiss Brice and I 
would at last find the small gas masks. There 
was nothing among the American masks that 
would do, so it was decided to give us the old 
stj^le French masks for which we were devout- 
ly grateful for they seemed far easier to ad- 
just. It was pointed out to us that the oxygen 
in these would not last so many hours as in 
the American masks but we in turn pointed 
out that we couldn't run more than one hour 
at the most. 

We had received our final equipment none 
too soon for the next morning with our blan- 
kets, folding cots, new masks and helmets we 
were loaded into an army car and taken yet 
further up the line to an engineering camp 

[86] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

on the side of a hill on the edge of the Argonne 
forest. 

It was explained that we could be billeted 
here in the engineers' barracks because there 
was a supply station nearby, from which pro- 
visions and ammunition were "shot" up to men 
in the front lines, just above, and we would 
also have thousands of troops to which to play, 
as the woods for miles around were sheltering 
troops that kept under cover by day and 
marched by night, so that the enemy's observa- 
tion planes might not discover the full strength 
of the blow that we were preparing to deliver. 

Some of the officers in the barracks were 
kind enough to give up one of their rooms to 
the three women of our companj^ and our cots 
were tucked into this room so closely that we 
had to crawl over the foot of them to get into 
bed. The men of the company wei-e put into 
an equally small room behind the kitchen of 
the officers' mess and Mr. jNIorrisey says that 
he will never forget the sound of the rats claws 
as they scratched their way up and over the 
slick surface of the tarpaulin mider which it 
was necessarj^ to sleep to keep out the damp- 
ness. He sa3's he used to lie awake in the night 

[87] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

and gamble with himself as to which of the rats 
would get "over the top" fii'st. 

At the foot of the hill below the main build- 
ing was a black little "lean-to" called "The 
Greasy Spoon." 

It was at the intersection of many lines of 
track that our American engineers had been 
laying for months — track connecting with our 
main bases of supplies hundreds of miles be- 
low, with the shipsdocks still further below, 
and with intermediary hospitals and supply 
bases, and finally with the very outposts of 
what was to mark the starting point of the 
great and final offensive. 

And over these tracks every twenty minutes 
American engines w^ere passing with long 
trains of American cars — cars bearing food, 
guns, tanks, aeroplanes. Red Cross suppHes, 
humans, live stock, portable houses, hospital 
tents and huge barrels of gasoline and oil. And 
wherever these latter were known to be side- 
tracked the Boche planes were quickly over- 
head to drop explosives in the hope of start- 
ing a general conflagration. The light from 
these explosives, sometimes near sometimes far, 
was almost the only light that we saw these 

[88] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

nights, for the camp was obliged to keep itself 
in utter darkness lest even one tiny spark of 
light might serve as a target for the Boche 
planes constantly hovering overhead. 

The hut in which we gave our first show was 
hermeticalh^ sealed and the entrance hung with 
double curtains so that no ray of light should 
escape, and not even a lighted cigarette was 
permitted to any one departing from it and 
the same rules were applied to the mess room 
and sleeping quarters. 

In fact divers tales were told of a whole 
company being wiped out near that very spot 
by an idiot who had lighted a cigarette just 
as a Boche bombing plane was passing over- 
head, though it was suspected by some that 
he was a spy and took this way of giving a 
signal. 

In any case, the black sun-oundings did 
not prevent the thousands of boys hidden with 
their commands in the adjoining woods from 
finding their way to the hut for our fii'st show 
and in spite of the fact that we gave two shows 
the same night hundreds had to be sent away 
with the promise of other shows the next night 
for those who had not been swept on toward 

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TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

*'the front." It was late when we'd finished 
the second performance and as usual we were 
hungry, so one of the officers helped us to pick 
our way down the hill to "The Greasy Spoon" 
and here we met our first "Corned Willie" 
also some undecorated heroes. 

A youth who had been on dut}^ forty-eight 
hours, his face smeared with soot, his hands red 
and swollen, stood with his back to the glowing 
oven "slinging" com willie, beans, and coffee 
across a counter of dry goods boxes to tired 
grimy trainmen who were averaging only three 
hours' sleep a night and were putting through 
a train every twenty minutes — an American 
train over American tracks laid by American 
engineers, manned by American soldiers, bear- 
ing American supplies, ammunition, and men. 
Just now they were rejoicing in having run a 
train for the first time over the last section 
of track laid to the veiy line of what was soon 
to become our fighting front — these last miles 
of track had been laid under shell fire but 
would save eight hours in the transportation 
of the womided and that eight hours would 
mean life or death to hundreds. 

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TROUPIXG FOR THE TROOPS 

It was in "The Greasy Spoon" that we first 
heard the doughboys' frank opinion of what 
they called "Sammie backers," meaning the 
fellows who stay at home and send them cigar- 
ettes and "good wishes." 

In fact there were few things, persons, or 
institutions that did not come in for their fair 
share of criticism in the black little shanty with 
its long benches and tables lit only by flickering 
candles and the yellow light from the open 
oven. Generals, Presidents and fickle sweet- 
hearts were introduced and retired with a 
phrase or a shrug and above the jangle of tin 
pans and forks one caught fragmentary re- 
ports of the night's happenings, trains over- 
turned, gasoline cars shelled, tracks blown out, 
and trainmen killed. 

I was inclined to wonder if these moody, 
overworked men and boys were colouring some 
of the details to entertain us "tender feet" — 
but next morning in the officers' mess where we 
were treated like members of the family, we 
could not escape hearing most of these reports 
repeated and we began to look with new ad- 
miration on the grim business like men who 
sat with us at table. They were not typical 

[91] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

army men nor were all of them yomig enough 
to come within the draft age. Some of them 
were men not unlike others I mentioned earlier, 
rich, successful and at the height of their busi- 
ness careers. They had given up interesting 
occupations to assume duties they had left be- 
hind in their youth and had not seen their 
homes since the very start of the war. Who 
can say when the records of these years are 
printed that there is no idealism in the busi- 
ness world of to-day? 

After breakfast, we walked to the little 
French Cemetery on the top of the hill, above 
the barracks, and here the American flags told 
the tale of many who would never see their 
homes again — not men who had been mentioned 
for brilliant service or had the thrill of going 
"over the top" but men who had died in ob- 
scurity providing ways and means for their 
more fortunate fellows to go "over the top." 

The Chaplain of the regiment joined us in 
our walk and asked if we'd like to take a look 
at a lost division that was making camp in 
the woods above. We asked what he meant by 
"lost." He told us how the Commander of 

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TROUPIXG FOR THE TROOPS 

these twenty thousand men had received in- 
structions to proceed to this point, where fur- 
ther orders were presumably to be waiting for 
him, but, finding no orders, he had no other 
course than to conceal his men in the woods 
and bide his time. 

From where we stood there was no sign of 
life whatever, but we had not beat our way 
more than a hundred feet tlu-ough the thick 
underbi-ush when we hterally fell upon thou- 
sands of burrowing, slashing humans, hacking 
their way through the vines and bushes to make 
trails to central points of manoemTC, and using 
the cut boughs to camouflage the tops of theii' 
*'pup tents" and wagons, so that enemy obser- 
vation planes could see only what was ap- 
parently a thick forest. These thousands of 
busy, bent figures made one think of ants tak- 
ing possession of a new home. So close and 
so well concealed were their "pup tents" that 
it took us some time to realise that we were in 
the midst of whole villages of them — canvas 
coops, so low and so small that the two men 
allotted to each have barely room enough to 
crawl in side by side and roll up in their blan- 
kets — the canvas is supposed to protect the 

[93] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

men from the rain but it is taken as a matter 
of course that in case of hard rain the men 
wake up in puddles of water. One of our 
players remarked that these must be called 
"pup tents" because no dog would sleep in 
them. And speaking of dogs our doughboys 
have dubbed the identification tags which the 
army are compelled to wear on their wrists or 
necks "dog tags." This is typical of the mat- 
ter-of-fact way in which our men regard the 
grim business of war. They have no false 
sentimentality to buoy them up, no love of 
adventure, no inborn lust of blood, nothing 
but a frank abhorrence for the wholesale 
butchery and brutahty into which they find 
themselves plunged and a steady stoical de- 
termination to see the job through. 

"Somebody has to do it," one of them said 
to me, "so we might as well get it over as soon 
as possible." 

One doughboy, hacking at a tough root near 
a space being cleared for the cooking oven, ex- 
pressed what most of them feel about France. 
He was hungry and tired and drenched to the 
skin and he didn't care who heard him. "The 
only thing that would serve the Germans 

[94] 



TROUPING FOR THE. TROOPS 

right," he said, "would be to give them a 
damned good licking and then give them 
France." The officer who stood near me pre- 
tended not to hear, but I caught a sly smile 
lurking around his lips and I remarked that the 
French scenery didn't seem to impress the 
doughboys as much as it did the American 
tom'ists. He answered that it was not the 
scenery that got on their nerves but tlie lack of 
sanitaiy plumbing, and he admitted that it 
would be a pretty hard matter for travel pam- 
phlets ever to '"sell" France to any of our 
doughboys. 

"Come on, fellows," shouted this particular 
boy when he'd finally torn out the unruly root 
and given way to the mess sergeant who was 
waiting to lay his brick for the oven. 

"I'm going down to the de-louser." The 
"de-louser" is the name the boys give to the 
public baths that assist them in separating 
themselves and their clothes from their cooties. 

"Those boys are willing to miss their mess 
to get that bath," the officer said, "they're a 
damned clean lot," and so they were and soon 
a long line of them was filing down the hill, 
some toward the de-louser, some to carry up 

[95] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

the water for the mess — and by the time we 
reached our barracks mid- way on the hill, some 
of them were already filing back again and 
once more I was reminded of ants — busy and 
steadj^ their minds thoroughly on the affair 
of the moment. 

This "lodging for the night" we soon learned 
was typical of hundreds of others in the forest 
all round us. And each day our local "Y" 
guide would take us in a car to some thicket 
where within twenty minutes we would have 
such an audience as none of us shall prob- 
ably ever see again. Sometimes we would 
mount a truck for our performance; for 
wagons, artillery, and horses were also con- 
cealed in these woods, but more often we would 
play on the ground, and the officer in command 
would give the order for the first few hundred 
boys to lie flat, those behind them were per- 
mitted to kneel, those at the back could stand 
and those who were "left over" would "shin- 
ney" up the trees like squirrels and di'ape 
themselves across the branches and hang sus- 
pended in strained attitudes during the entire 
show. If we happened to be playing in a 
young forest w^e were sometimes almost dizzy 

[96] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

with the swaying of the slender saplings wav- 
ing back and forth under the weight of human 
bodies. 

Sometimes our performance would be can- 
celled or cut short by the men to whom we were 
playing being suddenly ordered forward. On 
one occasion when our "Y" conductor had 
happened to leave us to the Colonel of the 
regiment who had volunteered to send us home 
in his car, the whole division was ordered for- 
ward in the midst of our performance. The 
Colonel had no alternative but to move with 
tliem and we were obhged to walk to the 
nearest railway station and beat our way 
"home" huddled together on a meat chest in a 
box car. We arrived about midnight, hungry 
and chilled and as we picked our way through 
tlie mud and the darkness up tlie liill toward 
the barracks Ray Walker our musician drew 
his foot out of a hole and paused long enough 
to remark that he was sick of hfe and he didn't 
care whether his gas mask fitted or not. 

But the next morning we were all going 
back down the hill in the sunlight with the de- 
spised gas masks and helmets, because the Col- 

[97] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

onel of the regiment where we were billeted 
had decided that we had been working so hard 
that we deserved a Httle pleasure trip and had 
detailed one of his heutenants to take us, in a 
limousine, to see the ruins of Verdun a few 
miles distant. Verdun! White dust-covered 
heaps of stone and bricks, crmnbling mortar, 
silent streets paved with huge, shiny cobble- 
stones, solemn faced gates that have withstood 
for ages the onslaughts of man and of nature, 
the sluggish JMeuse winding stealthily round 
the base of the liill and, looking up from the 
Gateway, the walls of the magnificent Cathe- 
dral still crowning the hill-top. 

We halted the car at the foot of the hill and 
our heutenant went in search of some one who 
would give us permission to enter the fortress 
underneath the mountain. 

He was gone so long that our party disap- 
peared, one by one, up the mountain side — each 
impatient to do his or her own exploring. I 
was last to leave the car and as I did so I 
noticed a small man in black coming toward 
me round the bend in the white road-way. 
With him walked a soldier in American uni- 
form and several French officials. He made 

[98] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

his way up the hill with them talking earnestly. 
It was Seci*etary Baker. 

Out of the golden stillness came a "Hello" — 
our Lieutenant was returning with a military 
guide to lead us through the Fortress. We en- 
tered by way of a cold damp tunnel through 
which narrow gauge cars were being pushed — 
they were laden with provisions and presently 
we were in the midst of huge bakeries where 
miles of bread, flour and cereals were stored — 
from there we passed to what looked like a 
wholesale grocery store and from there to a 
restam-ant where thousands of men were hav- 
ing tlieir mid-day meal, discussing tlie politics, 
feuds or amusements of their undergi-ound 
world with the same vehemence with which we 
discuss similar matters in our over-world. 

With the artist's desire to show us a con- 
trasting picture the guide now led us to a gay 
little chapel — still underground — where these 
same men were accustomed to worship. It was 
charming and reassuring in colour and detail 
but it always seems incongruous to think of 
men conmiuning with God underground and 
later when we passed out into the sunhght I 

[99] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

felt as though I had emerged from a strange 
world of gnomes. 

On top of tlie hill, sublime in its isolation and 
with dignity wrapping it round and enfolding 
it in a soft mantle of haze, stood the great Ca- 
thedral. 

We climbed up to it — no tourists — no voice 
to break the silence save that of one lone watch- 
man. 

We gazed in awe at the high vaulted en- 
trance that still remained intact, then stepped 
with reverence on the worn stones leading to 
the main body of the church — stones over which 
so many thousands of feet had so often borne 
aching or rejoicing hearts. 

We were barely out of the shadow of the 
vestibule when a shaft of light made us turn 
our eyes upward and there before us stood the 
foiu: great twisted columns of marble that had 
once supported the canopy of the high altar, 
now reaching their empty arms toward the sun- 
light pouring tlirough the shell-torn roof and 
to the blue sk}^ beyond. 

And the altar itself — ^that fine slab of un- 
adorned marble that seemed all the more im- 
posing stripped of everji:hing save its own en- 
[100] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

during quality and sjonbolism! We edged 
nearer to it and lingered there, saying little. 
Its very presence gave one a confidence in the 
ultimate sm-A^val of the fine and the strong. 

Next the guide led us to one of the smaller 
sanctuaries of the cathedral where a shell had 
just shattered the crucifix above the altar — 
fragments of blue glass still lay on the tiled 
floor where they had fallen from a broken vase. 
We turned our eyes again toward the high al- 
tar. Doves now flew in and out at random 
through the great shell hole in the vaulted ceil- 
ing, the altar was bathed in noon sunhght and 
through the shattered windows in the opposite 
wall unruly vines were beginning to creep from 
tlie garden of the Convent of ^larguerite, nes- 
tling with such confidence under the eaves of its 
great protector. And everywhere there was 
majesty and calm dignity — damage, perhaps 
but not destruction. There was a spirit within 
those battered walls tliat seemed to defy de- 
struction. 

We were late reacliing camp for our lunch- 
eon and I at first thought that the restrained 
air of the Colonel and the hea\y silence of his 
men was due to our tardiness. Then I remem- 

rioii 



TROUPIXG FOR THE TROOPS 

bered another and similar change in the social 
atmosphere weeks before at G. H. Q. just be- 
fore the big drive on Saint Miliiel and I felt 
certain that the hour of attack was at hand. 
Week upon week of preparation had been 
under way and it had been remarked the past 
few days that the necessary apparatus for the 
placement of some of the large naval guns con- 
verted to land service was the only thing delay- 
ing the announcement of the "zero hour." And 
now no doubt the big guns were in place and 
one might expect to hear their thunder at any 
moment. 

This conclusion was strengthened by the ar- 
rival of a courier before we had finished lunch- 
eon. He had come to tell us that the "matinee" 
we were to play that afternoon for his regi- 
ment in the woods nearby must be cancelled. 
The division was moving forward in response 
to a sudden order. 

Being set free from all other engagements, 
there seemed no reason why we should not con- 
sider an invitation to a pleasure party to which 
"the Little Major" of the Aviation Camp, 
miles back down the line had been trying for 
days to entice us. He had 'phoned our Colonel 
[102] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

of Engineers about it and even sent one of his 
flyers over our barracks to drop a note in our 
vicinity reminding us of it. And after a few 
hints on our part to our Colonel, who was no 
doubt glad to be rid of our prattle at such a 
critical moment we were loaded into his car and 
sent down the line to the Aviation Camp — it 
being understood of course that we were to re- 
tm'n to the barracks at a reasonable hour. 

Wlien we arrived at the Aviation Field we 
found that the "Little Major" and some of his 
officers had taken up their billet with a charm- 
ing old French couple in the village nearby and 
it was here that a dinner and dance were await- 
ing us — the first real dance since we had left 
America. The lion of the occasion was to be 
Eddie Rickenbacker who had just brought 
down his eighth Boche plane and who was soon 
destined to win the title of "The American 
Ace" and to be told by the Commander deco- 
rating him to increase his chest expansion to 
accommodate the many more decorations 
awaiting him. 

The Major's charming dining room with its 
polished walnut and candle light and flow- 
[103] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

ers looked strangely civilised after the rough 
surroundings to which we had become accus- 
tomed and he had managed to get together a 
stringed orchestra and it played between 
courses and we all danced and "The Little Ma- 
jor" seemed in fine spirits. One of his men con- 
fided to me that it was because he*d got a Boche 
that day. He said the men could always tell 
^hen they saw the Major coming home whether 
he had got a Boche for if he'd had a good day he 
always did a flip-flap over the hangar. I ex- 
pressed surprise that a commander of a wing 
should be permitted to fly. His Aide replied 
that the JNIajor ought not to do it, but he did. 
The JNIajor discovered by now that we were 
talking about him and he became self-conscious 
and blushed hke a girl, so to change the subject, 
I asked the man on my right the customary 
bromidic question as to what had been his most 
thrilling experience in the service. He told me 
of having been ordered one night dm'ing his 
earlier term of sen^ice to proceed to a certain 
point, pick up a certain passenger to whom he 
was not to speak, proceed with him across the 
German lines, drop him at a certain point, still 
without speaking, and leave him there. The 
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TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

man was, of course, one of our spies but my 
partner said that the most disagreeable moment 
of his whole life was when he was obliged to 
depart without even a word of farewell leaving 
his unknown passenger in that "black land of 
hell." 

By the time he had reached his dramatic cli- 
max the others at table suddenly burst into 
boos and derisive cat-calls and declared that 
the party was becoming much too solemn, so 
the dinner table was pushed aside and we began 
dancing in real earnest and every one was feel- 
ing deliciously reckless and merry. Then sud- 
denly "The Little Major" was called to the 
'phone and again the old air of suppressed ex- 
citement about which no one speaks but every 
one feels, and later, without any one exactly 
saying so, it seemed to get round from guest 
to guest, that we would hear the big guns be- 
fore morning. 

When we reached the foot of the hill on 
which our barracks stood, it was later than we 
had meant it to be. The moon had escaped 
from the few shifting clouds and the whole val- 
ley was bathed in a soft hazy light. We were 
[105] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

still in a very happy mood and we stopped half 
way up the hill to look down on the valley be- 
low us and at the dark line of the Argonne For- 
est beyond it, when suddenly out of the silvery 
distance at a quarter past eleven, came the 
boom of the fii'st Great Gun of the last great 
battle of the World's Greatest Conflict — and 
in quick succession more guns — gi'eat Naval 
monsters pressed into land sei-vice, far fi*om 
their natural bases — then flashes of light in 
front and to each side of us until we stood in a 
wide horse-shoe of light. Oh, the thrill of it! 
I sometimes think if I am ever to be born again 
I shoidd like it to be as a war correspondent 
with just enough income to insure me against a 
poverty-stricken old age, and then I should like 
to stay always in somid of the guns. Great 
Commanders must manipulate affairs from 
afar, their lives are too precious to be put in 
peril, doughboys are soon killed if they are 
given their chance at the front, but War cor- 
respondents are free agents — ^they can follow 
the sky rockets of war and dash from battle to 
battle wherever the fighting is thickest. 

All night the heavy firing continued and 
when it died down the next morning, I was 
[106] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

alarmed, lest something had given us a tempo- 
rary set-back, but the seasoned campaigners 
assured me that the silence was a good sign 
for it meant that we had driven the enemy so 
far that we must cease firing mitil we could 
move our artillery forward to pursue them, and 
so it proved to be, and so it continued to be day 
after day and week after week. 

And as our army advanced our little "En- 
tertamment Unit" was also permitted to ad- 
vance, and next time, after fond farewells to 
tlie Engineer group with whom we had been 
billeted so long and so well, we were loaded 
into a big bro^m touring car and carried up the 
"Great White Way" toward the direction in 
wliich the big guns had again resumed theii- 
booming. ]Vow that the battle was on, the 
Army no longer confined itself to moving 
troops and supplies by night and we had to 
pick our way in and out as best we could be- 
tween the steady stream of hea\ily laden cam- 
ions moving forward and the returning stream 
of empty camions moving back for fresh sup- 
plies. It was tedious business and we were 
sometimes blocked for hours and at times like 
this we would amuse ourselves watching the 
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TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

strange assortment of men and things moving 
toward "the front." 

Few regiments of men were without their 
animal mascots — sometimes it would be a huge 
shaggy dog balancing himself as well as he 
could on top of the rolling, rocking munitions, 
upon top of which he had been placed, some- 
times it was a goat held in the arms of some 
youth staring into space with di-eamy eyes, 
sometimes a rooster or a parrot. I even saw an 
eagle and a young pig with a ribbon round his 
neck. And they all moved forward together 
— infantry, cavalry, ai'tillerj^ — ^black, white and 
yellow — all toward a fate that promised them 
little hope of escape from mutilation. 

^'VTien we finally reached our destination it 
proved to be a somewhat shell-torn town in the 
heart of wliich two important war arteries 
crossed and so gi'eat was the congestion that we 
could scarcely work our way to the entrance of 
tlie Canteen above which our Unit was bil- 
leted. 

When we did finally get to the door and up 
the rickety stau-s and look down upon the 
streets from the windows of the one, desolate 
room where the three women were to sleep, I 

[108] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

fairly gasped at the colour and picturesqueness 
of the surging billowing sea of camions, men 
and animals all striving to fight their way 
through the congestion at the cross-roads and 
in spite of the waving arms and harsh com- 
mands of the American military police, the 
"Froggies" would get their camions out of line 
and the more excited they became by argument 
the further out of Ime they would get and gen- 
eral bedlam would prevail with every one ex- 
cept the stoical round-faced Amanites who 
seemed to sit at the wheels of their huge motor 
tiiicks without speaking, smihng, or looking to 
the right or the left at the Red Cross wagons, 
the machine guns, the "baby tanks" or parent 
tanks, the French cavalry, the black or white 
infantrj'-, or mules — all struggling to disen- 
tangle themselves from the constantly occur- 
ring "mix-ups." 

"WTien we had tired watching this "midway 
plaisance" effect from our windows we closed 
the shutters and lit our candles — here again no 
ray of light was permitted without ever5i;hing 
being hermetically sealed. 

The sole furniture of our room consisted of 
the three cots which we had brought with us 
[109] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

and on which the men had placed our blankets, 
one long rough board table with bench and one 
dry goods box on which was placed a small 
tin pan and near which stood a tin pail filled 
with water. This was all. The walls of the 
room were streaked with weather stains from 
the last rain and the cracks in the uncarpeted 
floor were filled with the dirt of ages. 

The resident *'Y" man had broken up some 
packing cases to make firewood for us and we 
started a little blaze and got out our towels and 
soap to make ready for dinner which we were 
told we were to eat at the sergeants' mess 
across the street and after which we were to 
give two performances in the town theatre — a 
little old glorified stable that had defied both 
sheU fire and the ravages of time. 

It did boast a stage, however, and tin reflec- 
tors for the foothghts. The organ for this fes- 
tive occasion, so the boys at the mess table told 
us, had been purloined from a distant "Y" 
hut and might be requisitioned at any moment. 

We learned other things in this jolly little 
Mess with its open fire and long benches and 
its tables covered with gay oilcloth and its kit- 
chen with glowing range gaping through the 
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TROUPIXG FOR THE TROOPS 

open door and sunny faced good natured boys 
officiating at the range and smiling at the 
thought of the surprise that was going to 
"knock us cold" when they gave us pumpkin 
pie for our supper. We gathered from this 
fragmentary conversation that here, at last, we 
were to play to the men who so many of the 
Commanders had said were in greatest need of 
us — the men who were just on the eve of "go- 
ing over the top." The boys of the mess were 
stationed in the village as were their whole di- 
\asion — a division that had been "stuck in the 
mud" up there for months holding the Argonne 
line which they and their dead comrades had 
helj^ed to establish four years ago and it was 
only since "the big offensive" had begun to 
shove this line back that the currents of fresh 
war activities flowing toward the firing line had 
begun to vitalise the air of their torpid little 
village. 

These currents were running flood tide now 
— sometimes the men passed through in whole 
divisions but more often in isolated hundreds or 
as individuals and those last were the ones who 
touched our hearts most, they were called "re- 
placements." They had been detached from 
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TROUPIXG FOR THE TROOPS 

their own regiments or recruited from conva- 
lescent wards and shot forward into unknown 
terrors with no comrades by their sides, know- 
ing only that on the morrow they must take the 
places of the fallen. And this village was their 
last stopping place on the night before going 
into action. And on and on they came in such 
nimibers that it was impossible for the Army, 
the "Y," or the residents to find shelter for 
them and they w^ould curl up in doorways or 
in the thickets beyond the village, or in barns, 
or stretch themselves on the "Y" floor, if they 
were early enough in town to find space there, 
and draw their overcoats or their blanket over 
them — for by the time they had reached this 
place they had been stripped of most of their 
other equipment. It was impossible to march 
long, under the weight of a sixty pound pack 
and extra rounds of ammunition, and although 
the weather was beginning to be bitter cold, 
when asked to choose between extra anmauni- 
tion and their blankets, I am told they invari- 
ably chose the extra ammunition. 

Oh, the joy of being able to offer shelter for 
at least a few hours each night in the theatre to 
at least a part of these cold, lonely, friendless 

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TROUPIXG FOR THE TROOPS 

souls and to hear them laugh at our silly non- 
sense and to make them forget that they were 
only so much fodder to be fed on the morrow 
into the same relentless maw that had swal- 
lowed up their comrades before them. 

An unfortunate thing happened one night, 
•Miss ^Meredith, our ingenue, was ill and it had 
been decided that we had better not attempt 
more than one performance that night, for in 
addition to our night work we were plaj^ing the 
Camps in the woods during the day and we 
feared that the young lady might lose her voice 
entirely. 

The "Y" man failed, however, to post a 
notice of the second performance being can- 
celled and when I came out the back entrance 
of the theatre, with two others of the Company,' 
he rushed up to me to say that thousands of the 
boys, out in front, were clamouring for admit- 
tance, and that they had stood in line for three 
hours expecting a second show and were about 
to break in the door. 

It was pitch black in the streets — no lights 
were permitted — not even a pocket flash — our 
Company was stopping some distance from the 
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TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

theatre — and the others had gone home some 
time before us. 

I suggested that they open the doors and let 
the boys in so that we could explain to them. 
The *'Y" man said that once they were in, they 
would demand a performance and probably 
tear up the place if they didn't get it. He sug- 
gested that I go round to the front of the thea- 
tre and speak to them in the street. I picked 
my way through the dark alley as well as I 
could and found myself in the midst of thou- 
sands of them. When the *'Y" man told them 
I was there — it was so dark they couldn't see 
me — they were quiet and attentive but when 
I explained that we could not give a second 
"show" they booed and protested. I told them 
that if they would only come again the next 
night we would play all night for them if they 
wished it. 

"We'll not be here to-morrow night," came a 
voice out of the darkness. "You needn't 
trouble. We'll be in the ti-enches to-morrow 
night," was another bitter answer, and I knew 
it was the tinith. 

By this time I was desperate. I resolved to 
rush back to the two members I had left at the 
[lU] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

stage entrance and see if we three could not 
give a show. When I got back through the 
crowd and the darkness they had gone. I 
stumbled up the dark street as best I could, the 
"Y" man also having become detached by now, 
and I burst into the room where JNIiss Meredith 
had made ready for her cot. She was in her 
dressing gown and very white but willing to 
make an attempt at another show if I could find 
the others. 

I looked in the back part of the building 
where the men were quartered, not one of them 
there, and at last I fumbled my way back 
through the dark street to tell the boys waiting 
at the theatre that there was no hope of an- 
other show. But they had evidently divined 
this and had slipped away into the night, no 
doubt cui-sing us in their hearts. I went back 
to our desolate little room and sat by the few 
remaining embers with my head in my hands 
so tired and so depressed and so sorry for the 
bitter thoughts that those boys would carry 
away with them that I didn't care a whoop 
whether I lived or died. 

One of the officers scolded me next day when 
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TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

I was still in the dumps and said I would never 
make a good soldier if I was going to have re- 
grets, but I did have regrets and each day and 
night no matter to how many men we played 
I was always conscious that we would never 
again have the opportunity of playing to those 
men who had waited so long that night in the 
dark and the cold and who are now — God 
knows where. And so long as 'we stayed in 
that town — no matter how heavy our work 
during the day, nor how ill or tired we felt at 
night, we alwaj^s gave our two shows, for here, 
if ever, they were needed, for day by day and 
night bj^ night the steady stream of victims and 
war implements never ceased passing under 
our windows — feeding — feeding — feeding ! 

And soon came back the retui'ning stream — 
the dead and the dying — and sometimes came 
with them long lines of German prisoners be- 
ing marching to the barb wire pens already pro- 
vided for them further down the line — and 
most of these looked yoimg, well fed and con- 
tent to be taken. 

Soon the temporary hospitals in the barns 
and woods nearby began to fill and overflow 
with the maimed and gassed and what a pity 

[116] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

that those at home could not have seen the un- 
believable efficiency with which the great sani- 
tary experts and surgeons of our country han- 
dled the hygiene and surgical necessities of 
situations, that men of less resource would have 
considered impossible. 

The relay system, the tabulation system, the 
impromptu operating devices, sterilising de- 
vices, and heating apparatus, the specialisation 
for gas cases, psychopathic cases, surgical cases 
and medical cases, handled in tents, stables or 
sheds and the Herculean endurance of these 
men who kept their brains clear and their 
hands steady for seventy-two hours at a stretch. 
Oh, Humanity, be proud! .You can never be 
proud enough of your best — never! 

We tried sometimes to play to some of the 
men in the hospital tents who had not been too 
seriousl}^ gassed, for while our nights were still 
needed at the theatre our days were now com- 
paratively free. We found, however, that as 
soon as the patients were sufficiently recov- 
ered to take notice of us, they were relayed to 
hospitals further down the line in order to 
make way for new cases, so we gave up these 
attempts and went back to our old scheme of 
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TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

hunting out the encampments in the woods or 
playing to troops halted along the roadside. 

One Sunday we were sent forward to within 
tliree miles of the firing line, into woods that 
had been for the past four j^ears in possession 
of the Boche. We were to play chiefly to a 
company of engineers who had not even seen a 
woman in eighteen months. Thej^ had belonged 
to one of the detachments that go in advance 
of the attacking forces to cut the barb wire or 
follow behind to clean up the WTeckage left in 
the wake of victory. The roads through the 
deep rain-soaked wood were almost impassable 
and by the time we reached the place where we 
were to leave the car and proceed on foot we 
were already late. We came upon our audience 
still farther in the thicket sitting on the wet 
ground, or logs, round a stage that they had 
built and equipped from German loot which 
they had salvaged from the recent drive. It 
was screened from above by a thick canopj'- of 
leaves and boughs so as to escape detection by 
the enemy planes. Four small German ma- 
chine guns, also salvaged, served as chairs for 
us and the table made from beech wood was 
edged with German shells and adorned with 
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TROUPIXG FOR THE TROOPS 

German canteens filled with goldenrod — a 
flower that apparently blooms in every coun- 
try. There was even a piano salvaged from a 
nearbj' dugout that had been occupied for four 
years by German officers. We inspected the 
dugout later and found that it was cement 
lined, calcimined and wired for electricitj\ The 
piano which had been originally captured by 
the Boche from the French was now to be 
played by an American musician. 

Being Sunday the Ai-my Chaplain opened 
the "show" with prayer; then standing we all 
repeated the oath of allegiance with the men 
and officers ; then the regimental band that had 
marched from a camp some miles below played 
the National Anthem, and at inten^als through 
it all came the steady boom of the big guns, 
slaughtering while we prayed. 

On our way out of this section we passed 
through another part of the forest. There 
were a great many graves by the roadside made 
for the German dead during their four years' 
occupation. The Huns had stolen tombstones 
from the French Cemeteries and painted Ger- 
man inscriptions over the carved inscriptions of 
the French. 

[119] 



GROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

When still further down the line in a deso- 
late little village we were requested by a Col- 
onel's aide to give a performance to part of a 
division temporarily quartered there, we did so 
— on the steps of a shelled cathedi-al, the high- 
est point of vantage in the town. The men 
stood on the side of the hill beneath us. We felt 
several times that we were losing their atten- 
tion, even though their eyes were on us, and we 
heard the faint whirrings of machines evidently 
high in the clouds. One of the officers confid- 
ed to us later that he had been obliged to have 
the order passed from man to man not to look 
up, for he knew from the peculiar throbbing of 
the engines that they belonged to the enemy 
and a sea of white faces turned upward is far 
easier to discern than the tops of heads — bald 
heads, of course, excepted. We were growing 
quite accustomed to overhead enemies by now 
but we all looked up a few days later when we 
were giving a performance to what was left of 
an Oregon division and we counted 107 of our 
own planes flying past at sunset m perfect for- 
mation toward the front. We learned later 
that some of om* friends of the first pursuit 
group were among them and that they formed 
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TROUPIXG FOR THE TROOPS 

part of one of the largest formations ever sent 
across the German lines. And all of them re- 
turned. 

AVhen we got back to our mess that night 
we were perfectly certain that some rumour 
was going the rounds in which we were not 
partners and the next morning Tommy Gray 
of our unit who had been sighing for a priest to 
confess him fell upon the information that had 
not yet reached even our camp officials. 

After walking miles toward a camp where 
he arrived only to find the Priest down with the 
*'flu," a Jewish Rabbi undertook to guide him 
to a camp of the Seventy- Seventh Division, 
further on, where he believed a priest was to be 
had and to their astonishment they found men 
loading an aeroplane with provisions and hom- 
ing pigeons which it was hoped they could drop 
to a battalion of their men that had been cut 
off by the enemy — a battalion that has since 
covered itself in glory, and become one of the 
picturesque features of the war. 

It was quite a feather in Tommy's cap to 
have found out something that none of the men 
in our division actually knew, and while he 
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TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

wasn't encouraged by the officers to talk about 
it we had become such close friends with the 
boys in the sergeants' mess that it somehow 
leaked out, and since it only confirmed rumours 
which they had already heard, it seemed rather 
stingy of us to be too reticent about it and 
each morning each asked his neighbour guard- 
edly if he had "heard anything." But it was 
not until weeks later that we heard the details 
of the ultimate fate of the battalion and of the 
stout heart of commander "Wliittelsey who 
shaved each morning with death at his elbow 
just to keep up the morale of his men. 

In the meantime our friendship with the boys 
in the mess grew warmer and we used to linger 
longer and longer over our hot cakes and mo- 
lasses to hear the boys spin their yarns and 
chaff each other. 

Rodeheaver of Billy Sunday fame "blew in" 
for coffee one morning and told us of the songs 
that he'd been singing in the mouths of the can- 
non and the boys responded with fifty-seven 
verses of a doughboy lay which seemed fa- 
mihar to them but was quite new to me. It 
was something about a boy from Arkansas who 
couldn't bear to kill a fly and what happened 

[122] 



TROUPIXG FOR THE TROOPS 

to him at the front and the refrain was always 
the sam^-"Oh this bloody, Bloody War!" 

Rodeheaver chuckled with dehght and told 
us some funny stories and left us laughing 
when he said Good-bye and after he had disap- 
peared down the alley the boys proceeded to 
dissect him and religionists in general and other 
celebrities of their country and of every other 
fellow's country and there was enough Ameri- 
can humour forthcoming from that group to 
have kept George Ade chronichng for the rest 
of his natural life — tender college youths, wild 
western thoroughbreds, East Side gangsters 
and country yokels all equally dear to each 
other and all determined to have theu* little joke 
till the finish. One chubby faced youth with 
an interrupted college career put his chin in his 
hands and gazed at the fire and said dolefully: 
"To think that one so young as I should have 
been through two wars!" I asked what he 
meant and it seems he had been through both 
the ^Mexican Border fluiTy and this and he still 
looked too young to be out at night. 

Only twice did I ever see their spirits even 
temporarily overcast. The first time was when 
two of the "casuals" from another division 
[123] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

^'helping out" in the kitchen were ordered back' 
to the front. They, too, were infants, but they 
had abeady been "over the top" once and land- 
ed in hospitals from which they had beaten 
their way to this place and now they were oif 
for their second chance with death. It touched 
one's heart to see the other chaps stuffing cigar- 
ettes and chocolate into their pockets and dig- 
ging up mascots for them — and as the two in- 
fants SA\Ting out the alley and into the street 
they called back to us gaily, "Good-bj^e, fel- 
lows, see you in New York or hell." 

The next morning at breakfast one of the 
boys brought in a letter on the envelope of 
which was scrawled in a fine, feeble hand the 
name of a youth whom they knew and in the 
corner of the envelope was this request from 
his mother: "Will some one please give this to 
my boy somewhere in France." The youth had 
been the chauffeur of the Colonel in that regi- 
ment and he had been killed by an exploding 
shell only that morning. The letter had been 
wandering around France for five months and 
had missed him by only five hours. And again 
"C'est la Guerre." Some lines of Grantland 
~ [124] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

Rice came back to me— lines from a :Mother's 
Prayer. 

My baby's gone; gone is my little lad; 
And now a man stands in his place. 
Stands where I cannot be, or see or shield. 
God guard Thou him ! 

When guns are still and strife is overpast. 
\^Tiisper to him, where'er he lies this night, 
The words I fain would speak could I be near; 
For, though he is no more a child, 
I always am his Mother." 

There was a hush at the table after the direc- 
tions on the envelope had been read aloud and 
we all hailed the first opportunity of interrup- 
tion when one of the boys rushed in from the 
street and told us to "come and see the fun." 
It was pretty well over when we arrived but 
it had evidently had something to do with a 
goat that was travelling as a mascot on top of 
one of the big camions and who had taken ad- 
vantage of the congestion of the traffic to start 
a little attack of his own on the unsuspecting 
driver whose back had been toward him. 

In front of the goat's vehicle was something 
even more amusing — an American driver 
swearing at French mules in English and then 
[125] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

trying to conciliate them "udth the few words of 
French that he knew. 

I noticed that the mules had no gas masks 
tied under their chins while all the horses wore 
them and I was told that the mules were so 
"damned stubborn" that nobody could ever get 
the masks on them in time to save their fool 
lives, so the Government had given up supply- 
ing them with them. 

Our little street party was broken up by the 
news that a perfectly good German piano had 
just been caj)tured and unloaded on one of the 
salvage dumps further up the line and, before 
we knew it, the ^less Sergeant and half a doz- 
en of the boys had got a truck and were off 
to get that piano for us, to replace the poor one 
that we were in hourly fear of losing from the 
village "Show Shop." 

The fact that the salvage dump was under 
shell fire only heightened their enthusiasm and 
some of the members of our unit decided to go 
\^ith them. They didn't get the piano but they 
got sensations about which they are still 
strangely non-committal and the next day when 
I went over the same traU with one of the offi- 
cers and saw the death and desolation that lay 
[126] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

either side of it, I realised why those returning 
from it had had nothing to say. "The Salvage 
Dumpr What will all Europe be after this 
frightful struggle but one huge Salvage 
Dump? Odds and ends of wreckage, animate 
and inanimate, heaped together on the blood- 
soaked shores of the flood of war. 

When we woke next morning we found a 
large car waiting outside our window to bear 
us back to Bar-le-duc, the headquarters of that 
particular region — and we were told that the 
Paris office had been wiring for us for days to 
proceed to the next "sector" where we were 
long overdue. It was not easy to say Good- 
bye to what had been oiu* first real taste of bat- 
tle and as our car edged its way back down the 
line against the steady stream of men and mu- 
nitions still pouring toward the front and as 
the din of the big guns grew fainter and fainter 
our spirits sank lower and lower. 

At Bar-le-duc, however, where we were to 
stay for the night, we were met by "Helios" 
from every side and in the main hotel we found 
war correspondents from New York, London, 
and Paris and many friends we'd not seen since 
[127] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

the beginning of our tour at G. H. Q. It was 
by one of these that we were dubbed "The 
Mayo Shock Unit," we having been farther to 
the front, at that time, than any other "Play- 
ers," and the title stuck to us for the remainder 
of our tour, much to the temporary distress of 
my mother who heard about it without know- 
ing the compliment it implied. Bar-le-duc it 
seemed had become a non-official headquarters 
for all those who needed to keep in close touch 
wath everything going on at the Argonne front 
— journalists, war lords, and war heroes, air 
conquerors and naval attaches. 

In one corner of the cafe munching cheese 
and jam sat Will Irwin, George Barr Baker, 
Maximilian Foster, Bozeman Bulger, Arthur 
Ruhl, Cameron McKenzie and Charles Kloeber 
— at the other side of the room with their rum 
and coffee were Damon Runyon, Claire Kena- 
more and Eddie Rickenbacker, now the Amer- 
ican Ace. Further on were A. L. James, 
Douglas ]McArthur, the youngest General in 
the army, Allen of the London Times and a 
half dozen comrades. At the cashier's desk 
was Alexander Wolcott, Patron Saint of "the 
Stars and Stripes," threatening to report 
[128] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

"the joint" and have it closed if the pro- 
prietor did not make good a five francs over- 
charge to one of the doughboys. It seemed as 
if we were in the Knickerbocker Cafe and the 
Savoy (Grille and the Crillon Restaurant all 
rolled into one, and then some one mentioned 
Don Martin and that only he out of that whole 
crowd was missing. There was a silence after 
this, then one of the boys suggested that we all 
w^alk round to the Press headquarters and find 
out what day had been fixed for his funeral in 
Paris. We stopped on the way to look from 
the bridge at the sluggish canal and at the gay 
coloured crockery that accidentally decorated 
some of the steps leading down to it. At the 
office there was apparently little news from the 
front and Will Irwin fell into a chair by the 
fire and began pounding his beloved typewTiter, 
The rest of us had a look at the big map on the 
wall and felt vexed to see that the horrid little 
kink in the line, at the foot of the Argonne, 
was still unstraightened and so many lives had 
been given in the effort. Less stubborn strong- 
holds were yielding, however, and the line was 
moving forward rapidly and as we returned 
down the street some one dared to prophecy 
[129] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

that peace negotiations would be under way by- 
Christmas. This was considered by the others 
as being highly absurd and one chap, who in- 
sisted that he had come over with the first Na- 
poleon, gave it as his opinion that the blooming 
war would never be over and became so de- 
pressed about it that it was decided to take him 
into a cafe nearby where somebody had a spe- 
cial "pull" and could get everybody a hot rum 
with spice which was thought most necessary 
by now to counteract the cold. And over the 
spiced rum the possible end of the war was 
again discussed and when obliged to face the 
thought of a world without a war they became 
more and more melancholy and some one de- 
cided that the least our Government could do 
for us in such an emergency would be to rent a 
nice warm country like Spain and allow those 
who had no other occupation to start another 
war. One preferred Bulgaria for the cheese, 
another Palestine for the tangerines and some 
one else China because of no "grafters," and by 
the time the map of the world had been covered 
with imaginary battles it was decided that they 
now needed the cold to counteract the rum and 
again we ambled down the street. 
[130] 



TROUPIIS^G FOR THE TROOPS 

At the French post one of the English boys 
left us to send a wire to his "little French girl." 
Another woman of my unit and I pretended 
that our vanity was hurt because he was so fil- 
ing to abandon our company, upon which he 
remarked: "There is no satisfaction in you 
American women because your brains never 
cease to function." 

When we got back to the "Y" we found 
our old chauffeur, "Conde — the speed maniac" 
— loading papers and cigarettes into a large 
armj^ car in front of the door. He was 
blissfully happy, having received permission to 
make one trip each daj?- to the ver j^ front line, if 
he could get there, to deliver those things to the 
boys. He had to drive all night to get back in 
time to make the next day's trip, but was per- 
fectly satisfied with the three hours sleep that 
he got each morning. Upstairs other packages 
of papers and cigarettes were being prepared 
for some one who was to drop them over the 
fighting front from aeroj^lanes. One of the by- 
standers suggested that the Secretary had bet- 
ter put some "Y" cards with the gifts or the 
boys would think that the "Knights of Colum- 
[131] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

bus" had sent them. The busy little Secretary 
answered that he didn't care if the boj^s thought 
they came from God so long as they got them 
and this is probably what the boys did think. 

We went into the next room to inquire for 
our mail and I found a second and more insist- 
ent telegram from Paris saying that it was 
most important that we report back there at 
once. I couldn't imagine anything more im- 
portant than the work we were leaving at the 
front but we, in our small way, were also sol- 
diers and under orders and as soon as we could 
get the necessary travel papers we caught the 
night train for Paris. It was impossible to get 
sleepers or reserved seats, for every available 
comfort was retained for the wounded and all 
trains were running out of schedule to make 
way for the "Blesses." 

ISTo lights were permitted in any of the com- 
partments and at each station mobs of desper- 
ate travellers forced their way into our pitch 
black compartments, fell over our feet and our 
baggage, sat upon us and cursed us as we 
cursed them and the entire night's ride to Paris 
consisted of a series of pitched battles between 
[132] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

those in the train and those, at way stations, at- 
tempting to get into it. 

When we finally reached headquarters We 
found that we were to be sent next into the 
quarantined camps in the S. O. S. where the 
Spanish Grippe and the Flu had necessitated 
the men's being shut up for weeks with no di- 
version and where the inaction was making sav- 
ages of them. 

It w^as not an easy matter to leave the big 
guns so far behind but we were promised that 
if we would go into the S. O. S. for two weeks 
that we might return to the Front at the end 
of that time. I shook my head and answered 
that the fighting would be over before we ever 
got back to the front. The *'Y" secretary said, 
we'd be lucky if the war was over in two years, 
but as it turned out I was right. 

I find it as difficult to Xi:rite of the S. O. S. as 
our men find it to go there, or to remain there, 
and yet many of our true heroes are there and 
have been there since the beginning of the war. 
There has been no pomp, glory nor excitement 
for them. They have had to play the unpio- 
turesque role of "The ]Man Behind the Gun"- — 
I dare say there are not ten amongst all those 
[133] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

thousands that go to make up the great belly 
of the sea that sends its waves toward the front, 
who would not gladly have risked arms, legs, 
and life itself, any and every hour of the day in 
preference to the enforced safety of those who 
must prepare the ways and means for those who 
reap death and decoration. JNIothers and 
sweethearts and those at home take care that 
no shade of disappointment crosses your face 
when your returning man tells you that he did 
not get up to "the front." Remember that it 
takes seven men back of the line to keep one 
man in the line and that your Government, not 
your son or sweetheart, has "the say" as to who 
the lucky seventh shall be who goes over the 
top, and remember, too, that it is the consensus 
of opinion of those who have dealt in this bloody 
business that "there are no cowards." 

Then, too, you'll hear tales of misfits, men 
reduced in rank, or relieved of their command, 
— this does not prove cowardice, it means only 
that in the business of war as in the business of 
life some men, many men, through no fault of 
their own get shoved into the wrong cubby 
holes. These must be re-classified. 

In one of the big re-classification centres in 
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TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

the S. O. S. I found the following lines by Rob- 
ert Freeman printed on a little pamphlet in the 
hall of the "Y" Hut.: 

I played with my blocks, I was but a child. 
Houses I builded, castles I piled; 
But they tottered and fell, all my labour was vain. 
Yet my father said kindly: "We'll try it again!" 

I played with my days. What's time to a lad? 
Why pore over books ? Play ! Play, and be glad ! 
Till my youth was all spent, like a sweet summer rain. 
Yet my father said kindly: "We'll try it again!" 

I played with my chance. Such gifts as were mine 
To work with, to win with, to serve the divine, 
I seized for myself, for myself they have lain. 
Yet my father says kindly: "We'll try it again!" 

I played with my soul, the soul that is I ; 
The best that is in me, I smothered the cry, 
I lulled it, I dulled it — and now, oh, the pain! 
Yet my father says kindly: "We'll try it again!" 

Our only glimpse of home life in the S. O. S. 
was provided by Mrs. Mallon, the matron of 
the "Y" hut at Saumur — only tJiis time the 
"hut" happened to be a handsome chateau con- 
verted into a social haven for the men and of- 
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GROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

ficers of the big artillery training camp. There 
were large cosy arm chairs in front of the open 
fire, and books to read and a piano and a writ- 
ing room and a dainty tea table where chocolate 
and cakes were served each afternoon and on 
the mantel the photograph of JMrs. !Mallon in 
the centre of a large family group. 

She saw me glance at the photograph and the 
colour crept up to the edge of her lovely snowy 
hair. A httle later she bent over me and whis- 
pered: "It's in awful taste for me to have that 
photograph there but it encourages the boys to 
tell me more about themselves when they real- 
ise that I am the mother of that family," and 
still later, by the fire that night, she told me 
how many boys out of a sense of chivahy and, 
not knowing the French customs, would find, 
after calling a few times on a French girl, that 
they were considered by the family to be en- 
gaged to her and rather than place her in an 
awkward position they would often place them- 
selves in a very unliappy one and would be 
breaking their hearts in secret because of the 
girl at home whom they really loved. 

She said she used to watch them day after 
day when they began to droop and lose heart 
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TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

and very often they would finally ask her about 
her boys and little by little they would confide 
in her and peiTnit her to help them out of dif- 
ficulties with which she with her worldly knowl- 
edge and experience knew how to cope. 

'Not all of the men in this town were there for 
re-classification. IMany of them belonged to 
the light artillery that was fighting sham bat- 
tles each day on the planes just back of the 
town and straining to get into "the real thing" 
' — others were there for cavalry training and 
jt was a wonderful sight to see them sitting 
their horses so splendidly and taking the jumps 
on a field where Napoleon himself had trained. 

From the artillery, cavalry, and re-classifi- 
cation camps of the S. O. S. we passed into 
what is known as "The Forbidden City" — a 
name given to Tours by the men in the smaller 
towns near it, who are forbidden to enter it. 
Perhaps this is because America already has 
more men there than can be comfortably disci- 
plined in one town — for grey-roofed, mud-rid- 
den Tom*s is the very hub of the wheel of 
America's war industry in Europe — a, wheel 
with spokes pointing toward Paris and the 
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TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

fighting front beyond it, toward Switzerland, 
Italy, the South of France — in any, and all di- 
rections, w^here we are obliged to deal in the 
ways and means of butchery and its after ef- 
fects. Outside the city walls were miles of 
tracks laid by our engineers, acres of railroad 
yards devoted to the loading and shipping of 
our war implements and food supplies, trucks, 
automobiles, aeroplanes and hospital equip- 
ment — and within the city walls the streets 
teeming with our army officials, engineers, car- 
penters, mechanicians, telephone girls and tech- 
nical experts. For instance some of the finesii 
watch makers are needed for the delicate ad- 
justments of the aeroplane mechanism and I 
was told that the superintendent of the Wal- 
tham Watch works was putting in ten hours a 
day in Tours as one of Uncle Sam's dollar a 
day men — and that he was one of many rich 
volunteers from America's business world who 
were sacrificing fortune and family comfort 
without any hope of recognition for service be- 
yond that given them by their own soul's ap- 
proval. 

Tours was a little world of itself, and with 
the military and the industrial factions run- 

[138] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

ning hand in hand or rather watching each 
other out of the corner of the eye one got that 
uncomfortable feeling of hidden treachery, se- 
cret rebellion, sullen fear and hate that I used 
to feel under the smiling surface of Germany's 
suavity or sometimes under the smooth waters 
at Salt Lake City. 

It is a condition that arises out of the disci- 
plining of the every detail and thought of lives 
that, robbed of their natural freedom, feel jus- 
tified in cheating the oppressor who has robbed 
them, and then follows suspicion and hatred 
and intrigue and frantic striving for power lest 
one be destroyed lacking it, and the next evolu- 
tion is called politics and out of that grows cor- 
ruption, dishonesty and every other horror and 
the end of it all is open war. And in a small 
way the little Kingdom of Tours while loyal to 
the country of its birth and fervent toward the 
cause that it was pledged to serve, seemed to 
me to be going through all the internal agony 
of a militarised industrial centre and I knew 
once and for all that I should rather be dead 
than obliged to live long in any atmosphere 
where one must be eternally on the alert against 
the subtle tyrannies of a military government. 
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TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

I was homesick for the big free spirit at the 
front where each man took it for granted that 
his fellow was more than equal to looking after 
his own job and I wished — as they wished — 
that each man in Tours could have a breath of 
"the air up there" even though it might even- 
tually be charged with gas. Anything was 
better than this heaviness and dullness and 
drabness. I was thankful when our work here 
was done. In fact we played two performances 
here each night — and most days — not altogeth- 
er out of kindness of heart — but in order to 
cover this area that much sooner and be on our 
way. 

In the next town we arrived late, having been 
sent by motor and lost our way — not so late 
however as we should have been by train for 
the tracks were now so congested by "blesse" 
trains relaying the wounded to hospitals fur- 
ther down the line that all train schedules had 
been practically abandoned. We were hustled 
into another car with very little supper and 
were again driven miles through the cold to the 
outskirts of the to^vn where we played to an 
audience of twenty-five hundred men who had 

[140] 



TROUPIXG rOK THE TROOPS 

been in quarantine for "ages" as they said and 
who were feeling perfectly desperate for a 
break in the monotony. 

One of the ''Y" women and a Red Cross 
nurse came back to the dressing room of the 
hut to tell me confidentially that the men had 
worked until seven that night decorating a new 
hall that they themselves had renovated and 
painted and that they had been scheming for 
days to "get up" a supper after the show and 
would be heart broken unless we came. We all 
looked at each other in despair for, in spite of 
having had better living accommodations in the 
S. O. S. than on any other part of the tour, the 
depressed state of tlie men to whom we played, 
or the great number of hospital shows, or the 
constant rain or something or other had pulled 
us down in a few days more than all the real 
hardships at the front— and we were so tired, 
as one of the girls put it, that our very souls 
ached. The men of our unit tried to explain 
this for us but the inevitable answer came back 
— "Just come for a few minutes. They haven't 
seen any girls for so long. It will do them so 
much good." We knew the speech by heart 
and we had often responded to it when we were 
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TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

longing and aching for our beds, and to-night 
on the way out we had pledged ourselves to 
each other not to give in to it again, and now we 
were all ashamed to refuse them and also 
ashamed to go back on our word to ourselves 
and to each other. 

I looked at the weaker of the two girls and 
said : "Well, how about it ?" She answered that 
she would do whatever the rest of us did. 

The men of our unit argued, and truthfully, 
that it was the girls that the boys wanted to see 
and that they would never be missed and were 
going home. 

When we saw how hard the boys must have 
worked to decorate the barracks and with what 
pleasure they watched each course of the sup- 
per come onto the long tables we were glad 
that we had not disappointed them but. Ye 
gods, there were hundi-eds of them and they 
had a band waiting to play dance music and 
there were only three of us. 

I shall never forget that dance — it seemed to 
me I'd only been turned in one direction when 
some one from out the long lines of uniforms 
that penned us in would seize me and turn me 
round in another direction and some one else 
[142] 



TROUPING FOR .THE rCROOPS 

would snatch me from him and step on me, and 
then release me to another before he'd even 
consoled me and so on and so on for hours and 
here and there out of the corner of my eye I 
could catch fleeting glimpses of a pink dress 
and a tan coloured dress and I knew the same 
thing was happening to the other two girls. 

Some time later on we leaned backed in the 
car too exhausted to speak. When we were 
about half way home one of the girls said 
wearily — "Well, I've only one life to give for 
my country, thank God!" 

And the next morning I thought my time 
had come to give mine. The expected had hap- 
pened — after dancing with men just recover- 
ing from Flu and just taking it on — I'd got 
one of the "going or coming" germs and it was 
only by the aid of all my will power, Mr. Mor- 
risey's rum, and Miss Brice's quinine, that I 
was able to keep going until we had played our 
last performance in the S. O. S. — temperature 
104 — and fallen exliausted into the first train 
that would get us back to Paris. 

Three times we were booked out of Paris to 
return to the front and as many times were we 
stopped by delays in travelling permits, illness, 
[143] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

this, that or the other, and before we could 
make a fourth attempt came rumours of the ap- 
proaching armistice and with the probability 
of a rapid shifting of troops it was decided to 
send no more entertainers north until some- 
thing decisive could be learned so, as I had 
predicted, we never again reached "the Front." 
Instead, we played the remaining ten days 
of our signed service in and around Paris, at 
Long Champs once the fashionable racing 
course, now converted into an army transporta- 
tion headquarters, at the Palais de Glace, once 
the old skating rink, now the "Y" Theatre, at 
the Soldiers and Sailors' Club, the Pavilion 
and other places, and while there was very little 
thrill in playing under such normal conditions 
there was at least the interest of daily and con- 
flicting rumours from the front and one night 
on our way home from the Palais de Glace 
where we had played to twenty-five hundred 
cheering men and seen so many New Yorkers 
in the audience that we almost thought it a first 
night, we met the French people surging 
through the streets, their arms round each other 
— and we were told that the Kaiser had been 
dethroned and that Berlin was in the throes of 
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TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

revolution. There was an hour's pandemonium 
in the streets of Paris and every one devoutly- 
hoped the Huns were wreaking upon the Kai- 
ser some of the vengeance that we should have 
liked to wreak on him. 

And then came the morning of November 
the 11th when all ears were open for the sound 
of the cannon that should proclaim the signing 
of the armistice. I myself heard nothing, but 
at noon boys began parading down the Avenue 
de rOpera with flags — their hands on each 
other's shoulders. By two o'clock the streets 
were swarming with men, women and children, 
marching aimlessly back and forth, hugging 
and kissing each other and sometimes trying to 
sing the INIarseillaise. 

At three o'clock when I looked down on the 
Place de 1' Opera from the top of the Equit- 
able Building, where I had joined friends, the 
streets were a mosaic of black, blue and tan, 
the red caps of the French soldiers with their 
yellow cross bars standing out like sunflowers 
amongst the more sombre colours of the sway- 
ing masses of humans below us. Occasional ve- 
hicles overladen with shouting soldiers made 
[145] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

their way here and there through the streets but 
these were few and far between and there were 
no bands or horns available to help out the 
voices that were trying to sing. I 

Across the street from us in front of the Rue 
de la Paix, it soon became the fashion for 
American and French soldiers, hands on shoul- 
ders, to form in long lines and march into the 
bar of the cafe for a drink. 

We watched the crowds without finding 
much variety in their antics until the wonderful 
Paris twilight began to wrap the distant 
steeples and turrets in mist. Opposite us the 
victory group on top of the Paris Opera House 
was silhouetted sharply against the sky and 
just underneath it the siren that had sounded so 
many alarms to terrified Paris in the four 
dreadful years just passed, seemed to be brood- 
ing on its lost occupation and I wondered how 
many years it would be before all the "Cave de 
Secours" signs would have disappeared from 
over the cellarways that had so long off*ered 
sanctuary to the fleeing. 

With friends of the Marine Corps I drove 
down to the Place de la Concorde out through 
the Champs Elysee and into the Bois. 

[146] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

The guns from the submarine on the Seine 
were still booming their tidings of victory as 
we neared the Arc de Triomphe. A proces- 
sion of French men and women bearing the 
flags and banners of the Allies swept through 
the splendid opening and on toward the Bois, 
singing the Marseillaise. 

As we passed further into the Bois we saw 
no one save here and there a pair of strolling 
lovers, unmindful of any tumult, save that in 
their otvti hearts. And ephemeral things, such 
as war, and immortal things, such as love, 
seemed once again, after four years of night- 
mare, to slip into their rightful proportions to 
each other. 

The haze grew more dense, little lakes here 
and there were barely discernible, the tali 
groups of poplars, in some of the more open 
spaces looked ghostlike and majestic against 
the poorly lighted sky. And nature, as though 
pitying the tired hearts and worn nerves of 
its war-weary victims, wrapped lovers and lone 
souls alike, in one of those soft enfolding nights 
that seem to bless and restore. 

We returned by way of "The Dolphin," 
found ourselves the only guests there, drank 
[147] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

our tea, port, or champagne-cocktails with what 
spirit of conquest we could muster, and reached 
the edge of the Bois just as a searchlight shot 
a long yellow stream of flame from the Eifel 
tower. It was the first time the tower had been 
lit since the war and it was the most lovely and 
most thrilling moment of the day's demonstra- 
tion. 

The crowds were becoming more subdued 
and less dense as we reached the hotel at the far 
end of the Tuileries Gardens. 

I had barely time to dress before our final 
performance at the Pavilion and, in one way, 
all the unit were glad to be playing, for each 
one of them was too highly keyed by the day's 
events to want to stay in doors. 

The performance seemed like an anti-climax 
after the one we had given the previous Satur- 
day night at the Palais de Glace and both we 
and our audience were eager to get into the 
street again and be a part of the mob. 

Both feigned enthusiasm, however, and at 
last we sang our final chorus, as a unit, having 
played to more than one hundred and twenty 
five thousand American men in France. 

So ended our last three months, as an official 
[148] 



TROUPING FOR THE TROOPS 

unit, also the last three months of the war. In 
spite of all eif orts to hasten our departure from 
America, Fate had timed our finish, to a day, 
to the finish of the fighting in France. 



THE END 



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